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COMPUTERS CONSUMER ELECTRONICS COMMUNICATIONS

Challenging

For The

Top Spot

Inno3D GeForce 7300GT

BY LESTER CO & VINCENT CHANG

By now, there is no need for introductions when it comes to the newest NVIDIA kid on the block - the

GeForce 7300 GT. We have seen the GPU blaze through the tests with Gainward's Bliss. But before we talk of results, we must stress that NVIDIA designed the GeForce 7300 GT to be very flexible in terms of core clock and memory type and clock with their vendors’ implementation. The result: a boom in creativity where we find NVIDIA partners with a myriad of variants.

InterVideo DVD applications are located. There weren’t any games bundled and we also found the accessories rather skimpy but, then again, this was a typical sight in value products.

As we predicted for 3DMark 2005, the Gainward and

Inno3D were within 2 - 4% of each other, with the

Gainward taking the lead. The ranking of the cards remained unchanged for 3DMark06 too but nevertheless, the Gainward maintained its slender lead over the Inno3D.

Inno3D has armed its GeForce 7300 GT (yes, it’s got a boring name) with very capable hardware that's almost the equal of the Gainward Bliss 7300 GT PCX.

Crucially, this includes 256MB of DDR3 memory clocked at 1400MHz. This is 100MHz faster than the

Gainward and has a latency of 1.4ns, similar to those found with 7600 GTs. The core is clocked at the higher end of the spectrum for a GeForce 7300 GT at 500MHz, though still 50MHz behind the Gainward.

Another rare treat with the Inno3D is the inclusion of two DVI outputs and that deserves two thumbs up in our book. Targeted for the budget mainstream market, we didn't really expect much out of this card’s bundle, and as expected, there wasn't much in the packaging. Users will find only a single disc, where the graphics drivers and some rather dated

In our game tests, there wasn't much to separate the Gainward and Inno3D cards in the following benchmarks involving Splinter Cell and Unreal

Tournament. Both cards had almost identical scores and were indisputably the faster cards for these two benchmarks. Moving on to Quake 4, again there was hardly any difference between the top two and the honors went equally to both the Gainward and the Inno3D. It is interesting to note that the higher memory clock of the Inno3D had more impact on its performance when anti-aliasing was enabled as we saw the Inno3D edging out the Gainward.

There is no overclocking headroom for this card. The

Inno3D even failed on even a minor 10MHz

RESULTS

Synthetic Test

Inno3D GeForce 7300 GT 256MB DDR3

Gainward Bliss 7300GT PCX 256MB DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS 256MB

Game Test

Inno3D GeForce 7300

Gainward Bliss 7300GT

NVIDIA GeForce 7600

1024 x 768

No FSAA/AF

4661

4789

3773

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory 1.3

1024 x 768

SM3.0 HDR / 8x AF

40

42

34

1280 x 1024

SM3.0 HDR / 8x AF

29

30

25

3DMark 2005 Pro

1024 x 768

4x FSAA/8x AF

3810

3870

2920

1280 x 1024

No FSAA/AF

3765

3898

3169

1280 x 1024

4x FSAA/ 8x AF

2991

3048

2321

Unreal Tournament 2004 ( AS-Convoy)

1024 x 768

4x FSAA / 8x AF

86

86

78

1280 x 1024

4x FSAA / 8x AF

83

83

72

1024 x 768

HQ, No FSAA/8x AF

84

86

66

1280 x 1024

HQ, No FSAA/8x AF

62

64

47

1024 x 768

No FSAA/AF

2879

2986

2547

3DMark 2006

Quake 4

1024 x 768

HQ, 4x FSAA/ 8x AF

58

57

39

1280 x 1024

No FSAA/AF

2309

2401

2074

1280 x 1024

HQ, 4x FSAA/ 8x AF

40

39

26

HWM Testbed:

Hardware: AMD Athlon FX-55 (2.6GHz), MSI K8N Diamond Plus, Kingston 1GB DDR400 (dual channel, low latency) memory, Seagate 7200.7 SATA HDD Software: Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2, DirectX 9.0c, NVIDIA

ForceWare 91.29

increment in the core and memory frequencies and it dropped out of 3DMark06 halfway through the stress test. This observation alone shouldn’t deter consumers from placing this card in their shortlist.

While the Inno3D name may have a reputation for budget quality, with a price of PhP 4,495, it’s definitely got an edge - even a small one - over the competition here especially since its performance closely rivals the Gainward Bliss 7300GT and even surprises us by including dual DVI-D.

SPECIFICATIONS

GPU Memory

256MB

Interfaces

Dual

Bus Price

PhP

4,495

GPU : NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT

ASIC : G73

Core clock : 500MHz

Memory : 1400MHz (1.4ns) 128-bit 256MB DDR3

Transistors : 177 Million

Vertex pipelines : 5

Pixel pipelines : 8

Video output : Dual DVI-D, mini-DIN (for video out)

Interface : PCI Express x16

Bundle : 1 x DVI-to-VGA adapter, 9-pin mini-DIN to Component dongle, S-Video to

Composite cable, User Manual, Quick Installation Guide, Driver CD, InterVideo WinDVD,

InterVideo WinDVD Creator

Warranty : 1 year

Contact : Axis Global Technologies Inc.

Tel. No.

: (632) 724-3340

Website :www.inno3d.com

HWM’S VERDICT

Features: 7.5

Performance: 9.0

Value: 9.0

One of the faster

7300GTs around.

Package bunde is slightly lacking though.

9.0

Out of 10

OCT 2006 55