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MSI GeForce 7300 GS 256MB DDR2 PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Saturday, 15 April 2006 |
Viper Lair comes up with a review on the MSI GeForce 7300 GS 256MB DDR2 PCIe graphics card. Enthusiasts are normally concerned with crazy framerates and high resolutions. The hardware required though is hardly cheap, and the fact of the matter is, high-end video cards are not the cash cows you might expect. The real money for most companies come from the mid-ranged to mainstream parts found in your under $200 aisles PC's. Aimed strictly at the mainstream, the MSI GeForce 7300 GS delivers an impressive feature set for well under $100. The GeForce 7300 GS is built upon the 90nm manufacturing process and features 4 pixel pipes and 3 vertex shaders. It is a half height PCI Express card, making it a candidate for slim desktop PC's.
 MSI GeForce 7300 GS 256MB DDR2 PCI-E Review
MSI maxes the supported core speed by clocking the card at 550MHz. TurboCache is supported with this product which can bump up the total addressable memory via the PCI Express bus, but to cover your bases, MSI arms their GeForce 7300 GS with 256MB of 810MHz DDR2, slightly up from NVIDIA's specifications. Compared to other GeForce 7300 GS cards, the MSI GeForce 7300 GS is slightly quicker thanks to its Dynamic Overclocking Technology. Depending on the load, core speed can increase by as much as 10%. On the memory, there isn't that much room of overclocking.
The MSI GeForce 7300 GS is really designed to compete against the ATI Radeon X1300 as well as onboard video solutions. The image quality is very good, and compared to current onboard video setups, well beyond anything those solutions can offer. We were not able to spot any huge differences between ATI and NVIDIA as far as gaming is concerned. While the GeForce 7300 GS lacks the pure speed of the much more expensive cards, the features are quite similar so you won't be sacrificing image quality for spending less than $100. As for the speed, you will not be able to play the latest games at high resolution.
What it's going to boil down to is which card will be cheaper when you're out shopping. Despite the slower DirectX performance, the MSI GeForce 7300 GS does support more DirectX features than the Radeon X1300, at least where 3DMark06 is concerned. Honestly, we think you should base your decision on the games you play now. So long as you undertand the obvious shortcomings of sub-$100 products, the MSI GeForce 7300 GS is not a bad choice, though depending on your needs, it may not be the best one.
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