nVidia GeForce 7300 Series

[Mahoney]

I gather these are right around the corner; sounds like they are the perfect option for an HTPC, with all the media capability of the 7800, just not nearly so good at 3D games. Anyone know of any gotchas that make them less appealing?

[RedR]

Heya,

Actually, I saw a review on the 7300 and the numbers looks awesome for games, even BF2 scored 40ish FPS (WOW). Even better one version of the card shows to be low profile. WOOT! This card looks like the perfect HTPC/PVR card by including the current chipset (7000 series) along with low profile and game features, and best of all price this card will be impossible to beat.

[stanger89]

Sweet!!

Hopefully they come passive (like I need another card )

[aperry]

Hopefully they'll offer an AGP version for the poor unfortunate saps like myself still stuck with that technology...

[PGPfan]

Stanger, they apparently DO have some vendors that will be releasing these in a passive form factor.

Aperry, I don't think that they will be able to make this in an AGP form factor (I use AGP myself, still ) since it uses some of the 'turbo cache' shared memory architecture of the previous 6200TC which was PCI-e only.

-PGPfan

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PGPfan

Stanger, they apparently DO have some vendors that will be releasing these in a passive form factor.

I figured as much, considering Asus makes a passive 7800GT

Aperry, I don't think that they will be able to make this in an AGP form factor (I use AGP myself, still ) since it uses some of the 'turbo cache' shared memory architecture of the previous 6200TC which was PCI-e only.

Ick, that's probably a good thing though, it will keep me from blowing money replacing my 6800.

[Mahoney]

I wish that reviewers would benchmark low-end graphics cards against old high end ones, rather than against current high-end ones and their competitors. I'd like to know how the Radeon X1300 compares to the Radeon 9700 for games, or the GeForce4.

[PGPfan]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Ick, that's probably a good thing though, it will keep me from blowing money replacing my 6800.

Stanger, I did say "some" of the 'turbo cache', not all. From the reviews I've been reading, it's to the point that it doesn't seem to be a big bottleneck (even for gaming) on this series of cards. For one thing, they are using 2-3 times more on board memory than the 6200TC's to begin with.

Most of the reviews are saying that it's about twice the performance of a 6200 for gaming, (so maybe about par with a low end 6600?) and equal to a 7800 for multimedia playback.

-PGPfan

[stanger89]

You know how much credit I give most "reviews"? About this much Most gaming sites are totally incompetent about reviewing the media aspects.

Of course a non-TC 7300 would be interesting.

[Polypro]

Extreme Tech podcast stated 7800GT in AGP is coming.

P

[paulbeers]

The geforce 7300 will be dropped into my current mainbox as soon as it comes out. Yes it does use TubroCache, but with onboard 128 or 256 mb of video ram, it shouldn't need to use the system ram for too much. h.256 decoding, passively cooled, low profile possibilities, what more could a guy want who doesn't game too much (and when he does, he deals with low level graphics). I am currently using onboard video, until it comes out (was planning on picking up another geforce 6600 for my mainbox until I read an article about this card). Now I just have to be patient.