NVIDIA GeForce GT 630. Obsolete architecture with a new name

It seems that large producers are looking at the market at a completely different angle than buyers. Of course, it is possible that in the US or Europe, users listen to the manufacturer's recommendations and choose a graphics accelerator based on them. In Russia, this seems like a utopia, and the market rules the price. It was and remains the main criterion in the selection of components. Therefore, it's no secret that most of the sales are made in the segment of budget and ultrabudgetary computer components.

Buying the same video card, no matter how much it costs, the user hopes to launch with her help some sample of interactive art. Otherwise, the purchase of the graphic adapter loses all meaning - with the office problems, an integrated one can easily cope.

Can a budget video card meet the needs of a gamer? To understand, consider the sample NVIDIA GeForce GT 630.

Equipment

The graphic adapter is delivered in a quite usual for the buyers box, on both sides of which there are more advertising slogans than dry information. Inside is only the device itself and the laser disc on which the drivers are recorded. No additional wires or adapters.

Appearance

The graphics adapter NVIDIA GeForce GT630 looks solid: full-size with a massive heatsink and cooler. And the last is dustproof. Well, the cooling system covers a large area of the board. The manufacturer notes that the production of the video card used only high-quality chokes, the cores of which are made of ferrite. And the capacitors have twice the lifetime.

Specifications

And if there are no claims to the embodiment of iron, then there are plenty of them to the engineers themselves. Although the first figure of model 6, the architecture is used the same as in younger representatives like GeForce 400, that is Femi. The video card processor is labeled as GF108, which means that the 2010 development was actually applied, and then only the younger models were released on this GPU.

We can say that today the NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 characteristics are completely analogous to the GT 440. The same frequencies, the same memory controller, the same number of units. In more detail, the GPU is designed for 40 nm. The number of transistors is 585 million, based on which four blocks of rasterization are executed, 16 - texturing. Stream processors are 96. Modest does not happen. The frequency of the processor of the video card is 810 MHz, which hardly compensates for all the shortcomings.

The NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 graphics card also has advantages. All of them relate to memory. Its work is carried out using a 128-bit bus, which is a rarity for the lowest price segment. The GDDR-5 chips operate at a frequency of 3200 MHz. Therefore, the memory bandwidth is 51.2 Gb / s, which is unattainable for the older brother in the face of the GT 640. It is unlikely that this will save the graphics adapter and bring its performance to a high level, but attempts to make a weak device competitive are worthy of respect. But his graphics processor characteristics are very modest.

By the way, in the line of NVIDIA products there is also a model with GDDR3 memory. To understand how much memory affects work, you can read the comments of the owners of NVIDIA GeForce GT 630. Reviews of those people who purchased the GDDR3 card do not praise this product.

Performance

Testing in 3DMark disappoints - 70% behind its nearest competitor in the face of GT 640. In Unganged Heaven it still seems noticeable - 50%, but Metro 2033 almost equals opponents, leaving only 10%. However, FPS on the high graphics settings is so low that it is possible to play the last one only by changing the settings to medium ones.

In Battlefield 3 and F1 2011 games, the frame rate has doubled compared to Metro, but still not enough for a comfortable game: the average is 20-24 frames per second.

Conclusion

Call the NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 a game video card the language will not turn. Performance in three-dimensional games is not even the last generation is too low, enjoy the work of game designers will not work. The reasons for this are that the company did not design a new product, but renamed the old one, trying to make money, not a video card. The funny thing is that even in 2010, when the GT 440 was released, it was considered the cheapest solution with the lowest performance of its line. Only by installing GDDR-5 memory in an outdated architecture card could not conquer a new level. Even overclocking does not help you type the right FPS for a comfortable game.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 is best suited for a non-gaming system that lacks a built-in graphics core. And in this case, you can even describe a few advantages of the board: a low level of power consumption with automatic lowering of frequencies in idle time; Quiet operation thanks to a quality cooling system. A graphics accelerator is also suitable for a gamer who has missed one or more generations of games, wants to enjoy the product released a few years ago.

And still, if you are looking for a cheap video card, the price of which does not exceed $ 70, you can not recommend the GT 630 even for the game with the lowest quality settings. It's better to look at AMD video cards: for example, HD 6670 and 6750 even today show a decent level of performance.