Introduction:
NVIDIA’s GeForce 7 series of GPU’s possesses an impressive feature set, with technologies such as CineFX 4.0, Intellisample 4.0 and Ultrashadow II. Their flagship card is currently the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 but for someone who wants a GeForce 7 on a budget, they simply do not have a spare $500-$1000. This is where the GeForce 7300GS is ideal.



A sub $150 graphics card with most of the bells and whistles of the 7 series, the GeForce 7300GS is an excellent alternative for the infrequent gamer who wants a little bit of performance but doesn’t need ultra high res and quality graphics. With that said, it still offers some processing power.

Today we are reviewing the Asus EN7300GS Geforce 7300GS. It’s Asus, so you can expect a quality card. This card runs at a core clock of 550MHz and utilises DDR2 memory at 810MHz, even though the reference 7300GS uses 800MHz RAM. For an entry-level card, these clocks are quite acceptable, and with 4 pixel processing pipelines and 3 vertex shaders, we can expect a somewhat decent performance from this card, given its price. It also supports the latest pixel shader 3.0 and the latest versions of DirectX andL. From a first glance, the only real negatives that can be seen with the card are its 64-bit memory bus and lack of SLI support. With that said, however, someone going for a dual graphics solution is likely to be looking for something with a bit more grunt than two 7300GS cards would offer.

Features and Specifications:

The features offered by this 7-series card are all of nVidia’s latest innovations, being:

• CineFX 4.0 Shading architecture
• Intellisample 4.0
• Ultrashadow II
• Purevideo
• Turbocache (giving it a healthy boost up to 512MB memory)
• Digital Vibrance Control 3.0

It should also be noted that the card will use up to 384MB of your system memory through its turbocache feature, so it’s recommended to have about 1GB total system memory for this card. That’s about standard these days, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem for most.

Specifications:

The Package:

ng the box, you will find:

• 7300GS Graphics card
• User Manual (on CD)
• Quick Start Guide
• DVI-I to Analog VGA converter
• HDTV-out cable

Not the biggest package, but really we don’t think anyone’s complaining about not paying more for a game or two that they don’t really want.

The Card Itself:

Asus’ rendition of the 7300GS boasts a low-profile turquoise PCB with a small active cooler. This is pretty much the reference PCB and cooler but it does the trick. Asus have chosen to include the Analog VGA connector and use a very sturdy method to connect it to the card. It’s always nice to see something different. Two RAM chips can be found at the front, and two at the back.

The card uses 4 Infineon DDR2 RAM chips rated at 2.5ns, which translates to 800MHz. Given that there are no ramsinks present (as this card isn’t aimed at the overclocker), we’re not expecting any great overclocks here.

Along the back we have the standard TV-out, Analog and Digital connectors. The card supports dual display which will greatly enhance your working space, allowing you to connect two monitors at once to the card.



The rear of the card is fairly uneventful, populated with the regular surface mount components and, as mentioned before, two of the cards four RAM chips.

The reference cooler is a small clear fan housed in plastic that’s mounted over a thin aluminium heatsink. It’s nice to see active cooling on an entry-level card, as it should allow for a little better overclocking of the core. It is, of course, a single slot solution.

The card is small, it’s light, doesn’t require extra power, and has the standard connections… It’s easy to see this isn’t a graphics powerhouse.

Testing:

The testing system was as follows:

AMD Opteron 144 (1.8GHz, 1MB L2 cache)
Gigabyte K8N-SLi (Bios revision F4)
2x512MB Geil Valueram )
Seagate 120GB HDD
Asus 7300GS 128MB. Using Forceware 82.65 drivers.

We used a mix of Synthetic and Gaming tests in order to get a nice picture of how this card performs:

3Dmark05: Tested in 1024x768, with and without anisotropic filtering enabled. Most people have access to this bench test so it gives a good idea of where the 7300GS performs in relation to other cards.

3Dmark06: Obviously the 7300GS is going to have trouble here, but this test was included because there was no reason not to. We weren’t expecting miracles here. Run at 1280x1024, no anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering.

AquaMark3: An ageing bench test, aquamark3 still gives a decent point for comparison and also a good idea of how the card will run previous generation games.

Half Life 2: CS:S and Lost Coast Stress Tests: The CS:S test gives a general idea of how the card will run games such as Half Life 2 in smaller spaces while the Lost Coast stress test runs the card through some wideareas with pretty HDR lighting effects. Run at 1024 and 1280 resolutions, with and without AA and AF, all settings highest and reflections set to reflect world. V-sync = off.

UT2004: Using a custom demo, this shows how the card runs older games that are a little more relaxed on requirements, but still require a decent computer. Run at 1024 and 1280 resolutions, with and without AA and AF, all highest settings.

NFS:MW: This racing game has some nice visuals and requires a smooth frame rate to gain any kind of playability. Tests were done using FRAPS in the first challenge race, start to finish. Run at 1024 and 1280 resolutions with and without AA and AF, settings set to highest and overbright turned off.

The Results:

3DMark 2005:


No surprises here. With this score we’d expect that it can keep up with most modern games in the lower resolutions at respectable settings.

3Dmark06 was only run once and we weren’t surprised with the result: 797 3Dmarks.
It looked pretty and keep in mind this was at 1280x1024. This is similar to what we’d expect from a 6600LE or thereabouts.

Aquamark3:

Aquamark3 shows that the 7300 will happily plod along with most older games at 1024x768 resolution, and will even do it with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. The images through this test were sharp and clear, and in many cases it stayed above 50FPS. AA and AF dropped the score by about 47.4%, which is very significant.

UT2004:

The first of the game tests, UT2004 remained very playable at even 1280x1024 with all details maxed out. Gameplay started to noticeably slow down though when more than a handful of enemies were on the screen. Nonetheless the game looked and for the most part played beautifully. Pumping up the AA and AF settings is where the card started to cry. Framerate drops of 54.5% at 1024x768 and then 66% at 1280x1024 make it clear that the poor 64-bit memory bus is the problem. It is clear, though, that games as old as UT2004 will have no issues running on the 7300GS, even with higher graphics settings.

HL2 Stress Tests:

The 7300GS impressed us here. We were not expecting it to be playable at 1280x1024 but in both games it was. While these stress tests are not entirely indicative of actual gameplay frame rates, we played both CS:S and Lost Coast and both remained playable at highest details at 1024x768, and had only mild slowdowns on higher resolutions. Of course, with AA and AF settings turned up we once again see the frame rates dropping by over 50% in almost every scenario.

NFS: Most Wanted:

Racing games that have you tearing through the streets at 250KM/H need to have a nice smooth frame rate so you can see where the next corner is or so you can react to dodge some traffic, for example. The only time where we were crashing all over the place was at maximum resolution, maximum settings and 4xAA 8xAF. That’s quite impressive for a low-end card such as the 7300GS. Of course, without any AA or AF enabled, the game was playable at all resolutions. We were very impressed.

Temperature/Noise:

The card was installed into a case with excellent airflow. Idle temperature was 64C and load temperature was 85C.

Even at 85C the small fan on the card remained very quiet. The cooling solution however seems as though it could be improved a little, as the fan did not hit much of the surface area of the heat sink. In fact, the inner sides of the heat sink were covered with the plastic shield that the fan is attached to, so the fan did not cool that part of the heat sink.

Using the standard Coolbits method of overclocking, the clock speeds of the card were raised up to a respectable and quite impressive 650MHz core and 944MHz memory. That’s a 100MHz increase on the core and 134MHz increase on memory. This increases its memory bandwidth from 6.4GB/s to 7.55GB/s. This extra bandwidth helps to make AA and AF more possible, however the card was still slow at overclocked settings.

Conclusion:

We were very impressed with the Asus 7300GS. It is clear that although not intended as a card for the hardcore gamer, it will still be able to play all of the latest games. It packs all of the latest features implemented into the Geforce 7 Series but it does not carry the price tag. Because of its quiet operation, small size, low cost and its HDTV out function, the 7300GS would be ideal for a HTPC setup that requires occasional gaming.

The results of our testing show that the Asus 7300GS performs well in most 3D applications in medium details, however we think that for games with heavy system requirements such as F.E.A.R and Far Cry, perhaps a more suitable card (and a little more cash) should be used. Unfortunately with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned on, the card struggles to perform in even 1024x768, and this is when it becomes clear that the 64-bit memory bus implemented by Nvidia lets the 7300 down.

For less than AUD$150, the performance this card offers is remarkable. We were not expecting the card to perform as well as it did in any of its game tests, and were pleasantly surprised. While the card did run a little hot for our liking, we encountered no stability issues and welcomed the excellent overclockability of the card as well. Our thoughts are that perhaps Nvidia could haved up the memory bus to 128-bit like they did on their previous generation entry-level cards, and we would have seen a remarkable improvement in performance for little increase in cost.

Overall, the 7300GS is excellent value for money, and we have no problems recommending this to the light gamer or HTPC builder who’s main concern is not the graphical computation power of their computer.

The Good:

• GeForce 7 feature set
• Decent performance to price ratio
• Low operational noise
• Won’t break the bank
• Can play all the latest games
• Excellent overclock potential

The Bad:

• 64-bit memory bus – does not like AA or AF at all
• High load temperature

Our Rating:
Excellent value – 8.75/10.

Discuss the review here.