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Gainward BLISS 7300 GT Limited Edition Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Monday, 03 July 2006 |
Hardware Zone shares a review on the Gainward BLISS 7300 GT Limited Edition video card. There's a new member in the GeForce 7300 series. For the longest time, NVIDIA's GeForce 7300 series was a bit of a misnomer, since it consisted of only one product, the GeForce 7300 GS. Aimed at the low-end, the GeForce 7300 GS was the intended upgrade from the previous low-end stalwart, the GeForce 6200 and was meant to compete against the ATI Radeon X1300 series. What it lacked in terms of pipelines, it made up for that with its low price. NVIDIA also shipped a retail version of the GeForce 7300 LE, which was formerly available only to OEM's and has even slower clock speeds than the GeForce 7300 GS.
 Gainward BLISS 7300 GT Limited Edition Review
The new GeForce 7300 GT is supposed to fill that void and most enthusiasts should recognize that in NVIDIA speak, the GT suffix denotes superior performance over the GS. If you remember the GeForce 7300 GS, NVIDIA allowed its manufacturing partners quite a lot of leeway in tailoring that variant. A similarly flexible approach towards customization is evident too for the new GeForce 7300 GT. However, you would be surprised at the degree of freedom allowed in its clock speeds. According to NVIDIA, the core of the GeForce 7300 GT can range from 350-575MHz, and memory between 667-1500MHz DDR.
It carries the GeForce 7300 brand so the GeForce 7300 GT should probably have the same core right? That's what we thought too initially. However, instead of the G72 core of the GeForce 7300 GS, the GT actually uses a G73 core, which has a larger transistor count and more crucially, more vertex shaders, 5 to be exact. Hence, it is also incidentally the same core found on the mid-range GeForce 7600 series. Yes, the GeForce 7300 GT uses the same core as the GeForce 7600 GS and GT. The difference is in the lesser number of pixel pipelines on the GeForce 7300 GT.
Gainward has gone for the higher end of the generously wide spectrum offered by NVIDIA for the GeForce 7300 GT. At 550MHz for the core, the Gainward BLISS 7300 GT is just 25MHz shy of the maximum speed allowed by NVIDIA. The 256MB of GDDR3 memory also falls within the speedy category at 1300MHz DDR, not too far from the theoretical maximum of 1500MHz. In short, the Gainward is on paper, very much a prince among GeForce 7300 GT genre and we expect to find its pedigree reflected in the benchmarks. Quite an impressive offering by Gainward with those clock speeds.
The high and mighty gets all the media attention and the same holds true for the graphics industry. High-end, luxury products that most consumers would not dream of paying for, receive the high profile media treatment, from deliberately leaked benchmarks to the competition among the media to break the latest news and rumors about the latest shiny from the technology firms. Meanwhile, the less glamorous mainstream products like the GeForce 7300 GT sneaks into the stores with not so much as a press release. In case you're wondering, the GeForce 7300 GT is already available in retail stores.
However, it's a no-brainer to choose the Gainward BLISS 7300 GT 256MB. This card is fast. It lives up to its limited edition label with one of the higher clock speeds that we have seen. These extreme clock speeds help the Gainward surpass its more illustrious GeForce 7600 GS cousin but most versions we saw would be more down to earth and hence, don't expect to find the same performance you saw in our benchmarks. Generally, price should be a decent indicator of where a GeForce 7300 GT stands due to the higher cost of faster GDDR3 chips and faster clock, so the Gainward should cost at least $99.
With the GeForce 7300 GT, NVIDIA has come close to the ideal graphics card for HTPC's. Although the HTPC trend does seem to be saturating at the moment, the presence of cheaper, mainstream cards that can handle multimedia properly may lead to more HTPC friendly configurations from OEM's and system builders alike. The GeForce 7300 GT as represented by the Gainward has almost everything that one will need, from decent gaming performance to passive cooling to a dual-link DVI output. However, the last requirement of a HDCP compliant DVI output remains unfulfilled and that is quite a letdown.
Hopefully, vendors will take up the slack and introduce models that are HDCP ready, especially to entice consumers looking to upgrade their hardware in anticipation of Windows Vista. Meanwhile, mainstream consumers should find the GeForce 7300 GT quite a nice fit for their multimedia needs, though going by the lack of publicity, it's more likely that it will end up integrated in branded PC's rather than the retail market.
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