It seems that large manufacturers look at the market from a completely different angle than buyers. Of course, it is quite 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. She was and remains the main criterion in the selection of components. Therefore, it is no secret to anyone that most of the sales are made in the segment of budget and ultra-budget computer components.
Buying a video card, no matter how much it costs, the user hopes to launch some kind of interactive art with it. Otherwise, the acquisition of a graphics adapter loses all meaning - integrated problems can easily cope with office problems.
Can a budget video card satisfy the needs of a gamer? To understand, consider a sample of the NVIDIA GeForce GT 630.
Equipment
The graphics adapter comes in a box quite familiar to customers, on both sides of which there are more advertising slogans than dry information. Inside, there is only the device itself and the laser disc on which the drivers are recorded. No extra wires or adapters.
Appearance
The NVIDIA GeForce GT630 graphics adapter looks solid: full-sized with a massive heatsink and cooler. And the latter is dustproof. Well, the cooling system covers a large area of the board. The manufacturer notes that in the production of the video card, only high-quality chokes were used, the cores of which are made of ferrite. And capacitors have twice as long lifespan.
Specifications
And if there are no complaints about the embodiment in iron, then there are plenty of them to the engineers themselves. Although the first digit of model 6, the architecture is used the same as in the younger representatives of the GeForce 400 type, that is, Femi. The video processor is marked as GF108, and this indicates that the development of 2010 was actually applied, and even then only younger models were produced on this GPU.
We can say that today the NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 has the same characteristics as the GT 440. The same frequencies, the same memory controller, the same number of blocks. In more detail, the GPU is designed according to the standards of 40 nm. The number of transistors is 585 million, on the basis of which four rasterization blocks are made, 16 - texturing. Stream processors are 96 here. It is never more modest. The processor frequency of the video card is 810 MHz, which is unlikely to compensate 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 rare for the lowest price segment. 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 the characteristics of the GPU are very modest.
By the way, in the NVIDIA product line there is also a model with GDDR3 memory. To understand how much memory affects the work, you can read the comments of the owners of NVIDIA GeForce GT 630. The reviews of those people who purchased the GDDR3 card do not praise this product.
Performance
Testing in 3DMark is disappointing - it lags 70% behind its closest competitor in the face of GT 640. In Unganged Heaven it still seems noticeable - 50%, but Metro 2033 almost equalizes opponents, leaving only 10%. However, FPS at high graphics settings is so low that you can play the latter only by changing the settings to medium.
In Battlefield 3 and F1 2011 games, the frame rate doubled compared to Metro, but still it is not enough for a comfortable game: the average value is 20-24 frames per second.
Conclusion
To call the NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 a gaming graphics card, the language will not turn. Performance in three-dimensional games of not even the latest generation is too low, you will not be able to enjoy the work of game designers. The reason for this is 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 in its lineup. Only by installing GDDR-5 memory in an outdated architecture did the card fail to take a new level. Even overclocking will not help you type the FPS you need for a comfortable game.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 is best suited for a non-gaming system that lacks an integrated graphics core. Moreover, in this case, you can even describe several advantages of the board: low power consumption with automatic frequency reduction in idle; quiet operation thanks to a high-quality cooling system. A graphics accelerator is also suitable for a gamer who has missed one or several generations of games, wants to enjoy a product that was released several years ago.
Nevertheless, if you are looking for a cheap graphics card whose price does not exceed $ 70, it is impossible to recommend the GT 630 even for a game with the lowest quality settings. It’s better to take a closer look at AMD video cards: for example, the HD 6670 and 6750 even today show a decent level of performance.