If prices stay the way they are with Crypto inflation, this may be my new market segment! The better 1030's are still in the $100 range but, it may be a generation or two before they qualify as an upgrade!
5-6 year old second hand Kepler cards are the new go-to for gaming systems if you ask me. A 680 or 770 isn't that far off from a 1050 Ti in performance in many games and they are very reliable cards. A 660 or something similar will certainly outpace a 1030 in every situation aside from efficiency. Since efficiency isn't that great, they aren't good for mining, so the prices haven't gone through the roof. They certainly higher than they used to be though. I remember reliably finding 660, 670 and 680 cards for $50-$80 a year or so ago, now they're starting to creep up over the $100 mark all the time because they are selling well at those prices.
Yep, I picked up a 770 dirt cheap ($130) on fleabay and it's fine for anything in 1080p. About 2x the power consumption of a 1050Ti but otherwise similar performance, and for the few hours a week I game it's a wash.
The 1030 isn't a good choice for gaming, you'd be better off with a used card. It's barely any better than the current Intel iGPUs and runs neck and neck with Ryzen's iGPU.
I wouldn't quite say "not a good choice". Running neck and neck with Ryzen APUs, yes, but that still means it's 3 times faster than the "common" (GT2) intel IGPs (Skylake/Kabylake/Coffeelake). Of course if it makes sense or not also depends on how close in price it's to the next step up (GTX 1050) - and in fact while with the official MSRP you'd be better off with just going with the latter, "thanks" to the mining craze the GT 1030 looks quite reasonable. But of course, the ddr4 version will sacrifice quite a bit of the advantage over intel's igp. It is imho especially disappointing they went with bottom-of-the-barrel ddr4 - nowadays that speed grade you'd hardly find acceptable even as system memory.
I have the mobile equivalent (MX150) and it’s a LOT faster than Intel iGPUs. Keep in mind that a discrete card has a separate TDP and does not compete for main memory bandwidth. When a game uses both the CPU and GPU heavily, the iGPU slows to a crawl.
Overclock the 1030... It beats the Ryzens IGP every day of the week.
I have a secondary PC which is small-form factor, slim... With 8GB DDR2, Core 2 Quad Q9650.
The only cards I can have in that rig are low-profile, single slot GPU's... And the 1030 with GDDR5 is currently the fastest GPU out that fits that description, hence why I got one.
The rig still does and plays everything I want flawlessly (Overwatch, Age of Empires Definitive Edition, Homeworld Remastered and so on), with most games happily running at 1080P with settings dialed down.
DDR4 though feels and looks like a step backwards in my eyes, the least nVidia could have done was made it 128bit to make up for the deficit.
> The only cards I can have in that rig are low-profile, single slot GPU's... And the 1030 with GDDR5 is currently the fastest GPU out that fits that description
Wrong. Quadro P1000 is also single-slot LP, and it's nearly as fast as a GTX 1050.
The P1000 retails for north of $320 on Amazon whereas the 1030 is currently selling there for $120 so that performance increase comes at a significant cost to the buyer.
Well, you can overclock the Ryzen IGP too. Overclock the bejesus out of it and run it with 3400+ RAM. So IDK seems like it would still run neck and neck. If you're buying higher-end chips for Intel OR AMD, the 1030 isn't enough. If you're going AMD on a budget, decent graphics are bundled in. So the best use case for the 1030 is Intel on a budget, and for the part of the market it does fine.
With that being said, the DDR4 model is likely going to be a performance embarrassment unless they're selling it for $60. OEMs will love it though.
There are now 1050 low profile 4GDDR card out there but have been mark up over MSRP. They seem to have cut corners when it comes to noise management features like the fan does not slow down or turn off when not needed for example. I will wait till they add back features found in the full size 1050 before I make purchase. Quietness is a top priority for me!
I think the 1030 could also be a viable choice for older PCs like say C2D, C2Q, PCs from say 2007 till 2010 where a higher graphics card like say a 1050 or 1060 or higher would get bottlenecked.
There are a lot of retired small-form factor business desktop PCs that have hard-to-replace power supplies. A 1030 is a significant upgrade for something like that where the upgrading the CPU or installing full height GPU isn't easily done. Also the 1030 anywhere between 3x and 5x faster than current Intel iGPUs (less Iris Pro and the new Radeon HBM versions).
Hi Nate! One missing detail that is a make-or-break one for my interests (HTPC use): what spec is the HDMI port on these new lower-end cards? If the card supports the recent (current) HDMI standards, it might salvage my rig until the cryptomining craze dies down and prices for better cards return to planet earth. Thanks!
Well, I can't speak to this new variant of the 1030 but I have an early GDDR5 one as an HTPC card and it works great. It has full HEVC hardware decoding that works in Kodi on Windows and supports HDMI 2.0b.
Thanks, that's helpful! Fingers crossed that these DDR4 economy versions will do so too.
I also agree with other posts here that they could have used at least mainstream-fast DDR4 in these new cards, not the bottom-of-the-barrel slow chips.
Good god... It's like the 27 flavors of Gt710 all over again. That old thing ranges from 96 Cuda core to what 296? Could be Fermi or Kepler. 64bit to 128bit bus. Ddr3 to gddr5 memory. No clear delineation between the models.
Nate, Without doing any searching to back up my suspicions... I don't think Mbps is the correct unit for memory speeds in the article or table. Maybe MT/s?
This doesn't really change the meaning behind the article (YAY! There's new slower variants of the GT 1030 available to confuse the ill-informed with now!) but if the units on the specification in question are wrong it'd be nice if they could be corrected.
This matter comes up in GPU-related articles now and then. The GPU and memory manufacturers have told us that they'd prefer we use bps instead of MHz or MT/s. It's somewhat arbitrary, I agree, but it does avoid some unnecessary confusion about frequency versus bandwidth.
I want Nvidia to roll out a $40 GT1010 gpu for htpc usage as their GT710 uses the ancient fermi architecture. Both Nvidia and AMD have abandoned this market segment. Some people buy ryzen cpus and just want a gpu that can hardware decode the latest video codecs and accelerate applications using latest opencl. Instead they are forced to pay ~$80 for the latest gen lowest cost gpu.
That would be nice. Reminds me of how a couple weeks ago I saw someone buying a Radeon HD 6450 at Micro Center - a card that will be 7 years old next month. Don't know if they were replacing an old part or just needed a display on CPU, but it's the most powerful CPU in stock for $50 (though there's a $40 710 that's sometimes in stock).
At least they weren't forced to go with the 8-year-old HD 5450, or *shudder* the almost-9-year-old 1 GB 8400 GS.
Would love if it was x1 PCIe slot. That's the only thing missing currently. There's plenty of cards for everything else. I would love something new to replace the GT 710 from Zotac.
Yes, that IS amazing and depressing. Just to make people like me (potential buyer/user) feel even worse, compare the bandwidth of this dedicated (!) graphics card to the memory bandwidth in the current gen iPhone*, which is close to 60 Gb/s, and yes, that's with LPDDR4 - but then, Apple uses a 128 bit memory bus. Take a look, Nvidia, it's not that difficult! * I do not own, or have ever owned, an IPhone. makes this even more galling!
I heard that most video card manufacturer overstated the card's power requirement because a lot of the aftermarket power supplies actually do not deliver their stated wattage. If I known this, I would have not upgrades my power supply!
Yeah... i can run q9550 3.4ghz and a 8600gts on a chinese 500w (200w maximum) but cannot run with my 6770. Thats a lie. New system only pull 1/4 from a core 2 quad era. Thats not chinese worst power supply. But a nvidia boot on users face.
I love the GT 1030 for the fanless design, a now with lower wattage I expect it to work even cooler. It's not in the range of gaming GPU, it is used so no ram is taken from the CPU for graphics. It fits that niche perfectly.
It absolutely is in the range of a basic gaming GPU and that might be part of the problem. Gutting the bandwidth is going to make this thing pathetic for gaming and basically a $90 HDMI 2.0 card.
You'll find that the performance and power saving of the GDDR4 GT1030 will be marginal compared with the GT730. But the price will be substantial. Definitely a ripoff to ignorant customers.
Well I own a 1030 (GDDR5 version), as I needed a GPU for an intel i5 750, these older intel chips have no iGPU. When I got the 1030 I noticed that nvidia owned that segment of the market, the only competition was previous generation nvidia hardware, AMD dont have anything in that price or TDP range. So the lack of competition has meant nvidia can take this kind of action knowing it wont hurt sales. This definitely should be a new SKU, its classic bait and switch.
Also I am pretty sure this will hurt physx performance, I tested my 1030 out as a physx card, and it had high utilisation on the memory bandwidth during that testing, certainly higher than 33% which is the new DDR4 limit.
I would really like if they came out with a "GT 1020" with the DDR4 but in a x1 formfactor. The last x1 card that came out is the Zotac GT 710, in 2016. There's a lot of options now for x4 and x8 slots, low profile, single slot and cheaper/affordable but nothing in x1. There's still a lot of us with empty x1 slots, or have older boards with x1 slots or don't have an iGPU on our CPU; so would be great for servers, workstations, more video ommmph for HTPC. It's the only thing really missing on the current market. A x1 version with DDR4 would make the most sense for this kind of product.
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Jad77 - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
If prices stay the way they are with Crypto inflation, this may be my new market segment! The better 1030's are still in the $100 range but, it may be a generation or two before they qualify as an upgrade!ozzuneoj86 - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
5-6 year old second hand Kepler cards are the new go-to for gaming systems if you ask me. A 680 or 770 isn't that far off from a 1050 Ti in performance in many games and they are very reliable cards. A 660 or something similar will certainly outpace a 1030 in every situation aside from efficiency. Since efficiency isn't that great, they aren't good for mining, so the prices haven't gone through the roof. They certainly higher than they used to be though. I remember reliably finding 660, 670 and 680 cards for $50-$80 a year or so ago, now they're starting to creep up over the $100 mark all the time because they are selling well at those prices.Samus - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Yep, I picked up a 770 dirt cheap ($130) on fleabay and it's fine for anything in 1080p. About 2x the power consumption of a 1050Ti but otherwise similar performance, and for the few hours a week I game it's a wash.willis936 - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
The 770 is 25% faster than the 1050 Ti.Flunk - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
The 1030 isn't a good choice for gaming, you'd be better off with a used card. It's barely any better than the current Intel iGPUs and runs neck and neck with Ryzen's iGPU.mczak - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
I wouldn't quite say "not a good choice". Running neck and neck with Ryzen APUs, yes, but that still means it's 3 times faster than the "common" (GT2) intel IGPs (Skylake/Kabylake/Coffeelake). Of course if it makes sense or not also depends on how close in price it's to the next step up (GTX 1050) - and in fact while with the official MSRP you'd be better off with just going with the latter, "thanks" to the mining craze the GT 1030 looks quite reasonable.But of course, the ddr4 version will sacrifice quite a bit of the advantage over intel's igp.
It is imho especially disappointing they went with bottom-of-the-barrel ddr4 - nowadays that speed grade you'd hardly find acceptable even as system memory.
kfishy - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
I have the mobile equivalent (MX150) and it’s a LOT faster than Intel iGPUs. Keep in mind that a discrete card has a separate TDP and does not compete for main memory bandwidth. When a game uses both the CPU and GPU heavily, the iGPU slows to a crawl.StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Overclock the 1030... It beats the Ryzens IGP every day of the week.I have a secondary PC which is small-form factor, slim... With 8GB DDR2, Core 2 Quad Q9650.
The only cards I can have in that rig are low-profile, single slot GPU's... And the 1030 with GDDR5 is currently the fastest GPU out that fits that description, hence why I got one.
The rig still does and plays everything I want flawlessly (Overwatch, Age of Empires Definitive Edition, Homeworld Remastered and so on), with most games happily running at 1080P with settings dialed down.
DDR4 though feels and looks like a step backwards in my eyes, the least nVidia could have done was made it 128bit to make up for the deficit.
mode_13h - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
> The only cards I can have in that rig are low-profile, single slot GPU's... And the 1030 with GDDR5 is currently the fastest GPU out that fits that descriptionWrong. Quadro P1000 is also single-slot LP, and it's nearly as fast as a GTX 1050.
PeachNCream - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
The P1000 retails for north of $320 on Amazon whereas the 1030 is currently selling there for $120 so that performance increase comes at a significant cost to the buyer.mode_13h - Saturday, April 7, 2018 - link
I know that, but @StevoLincolnite didn't say anything about cost.StevoLincolnite - Sunday, April 8, 2018 - link
I thought it would have been common sense if you were looking at the 1030.StevoLincolnite - Sunday, April 8, 2018 - link
Let me reiterate. "Consumer cards".Always someone who needs to be pedantic. xD
Alexvrb - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Well, you can overclock the Ryzen IGP too. Overclock the bejesus out of it and run it with 3400+ RAM. So IDK seems like it would still run neck and neck. If you're buying higher-end chips for Intel OR AMD, the 1030 isn't enough. If you're going AMD on a budget, decent graphics are bundled in. So the best use case for the 1030 is Intel on a budget, and for the part of the market it does fine.With that being said, the DDR4 model is likely going to be a performance embarrassment unless they're selling it for $60. OEMs will love it though.
StevoLincolnite - Sunday, April 8, 2018 - link
I think Pascal has proven itself in regards of how high she can clock though.Harry_Wild - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
There are now 1050 low profile 4GDDR card out there but have been mark up over MSRP. They seem to have cut corners when it comes to noise management features like the fan does not slow down or turn off when not needed for example. I will wait till they add back features found in the full size 1050 before I make purchase. Quietness is a top priority for me!sburton84 - Saturday, April 7, 2018 - link
I think the 1030 could also be a viable choice for older PCs like say C2D, C2Q, PCs from say 2007 till 2010 where a higher graphics card like say a 1050 or 1060 or higher would get bottlenecked.PeachNCream - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
There are a lot of retired small-form factor business desktop PCs that have hard-to-replace power supplies. A 1030 is a significant upgrade for something like that where the upgrading the CPU or installing full height GPU isn't easily done. Also the 1030 anywhere between 3x and 5x faster than current Intel iGPUs (less Iris Pro and the new Radeon HBM versions).eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Hi Nate! One missing detail that is a make-or-break one for my interests (HTPC use): what spec is the HDMI port on these new lower-end cards? If the card supports the recent (current) HDMI standards, it might salvage my rig until the cryptomining craze dies down and prices for better cards return to planet earth.Thanks!
evilspoons - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Well, I can't speak to this new variant of the 1030 but I have an early GDDR5 one as an HTPC card and it works great. It has full HEVC hardware decoding that works in Kodi on Windows and supports HDMI 2.0b.eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Thanks, that's helpful! Fingers crossed that these DDR4 economy versions will do so too.I also agree with other posts here that they could have used at least mainstream-fast DDR4 in these new cards, not the bottom-of-the-barrel slow chips.
ToTTenTranz - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
That link isn't from nvidia, it's from MSI..Zero11s - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
good for a cheaper HEVC upgrade for PC without iGPUEj24 - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Good god... It's like the 27 flavors of Gt710 all over again. That old thing ranges from 96 Cuda core to what 296? Could be Fermi or Kepler. 64bit to 128bit bus. Ddr3 to gddr5 memory. No clear delineation between the models.MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Nate,Without doing any searching to back up my suspicions... I don't think Mbps is the correct unit for memory speeds in the article or table. Maybe MT/s?
This doesn't really change the meaning behind the article (YAY! There's new slower variants of the GT 1030 available to confuse the ill-informed with now!) but if the units on the specification in question are wrong it'd be nice if they could be corrected.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
This matter comes up in GPU-related articles now and then. The GPU and memory manufacturers have told us that they'd prefer we use bps instead of MHz or MT/s. It's somewhat arbitrary, I agree, but it does avoid some unnecessary confusion about frequency versus bandwidth.spaceship9876 - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
I want Nvidia to roll out a $40 GT1010 gpu for htpc usage as their GT710 uses the ancient fermi architecture. Both Nvidia and AMD have abandoned this market segment. Some people buy ryzen cpus and just want a gpu that can hardware decode the latest video codecs and accelerate applications using latest opencl. Instead they are forced to pay ~$80 for the latest gen lowest cost gpu.mode_13h - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
The market for new GPUs that are no faster than an iGPU is too small. I really wouldn't expect to see anything slower than a GTX 1030 or a RX 550.And for HTPC, I see 3 different passively-cooled GTX 1030's on newegg.
IBM760XL - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
That would be nice. Reminds me of how a couple weeks ago I saw someone buying a Radeon HD 6450 at Micro Center - a card that will be 7 years old next month. Don't know if they were replacing an old part or just needed a display on CPU, but it's the most powerful CPU in stock for $50 (though there's a $40 710 that's sometimes in stock).At least they weren't forced to go with the 8-year-old HD 5450, or *shudder* the almost-9-year-old 1 GB 8400 GS.
bennyg - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
Years ago I tried a passive 5450 for htpc duties. Quickly ditched it as it couldn't handle even mild bitrate 1080p content without dropping frames.CheapSushi - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
Would love if it was x1 PCIe slot. That's the only thing missing currently. There's plenty of cards for everything else. I would love something new to replace the GT 710 from Zotac.superunknown98 - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
So this card has less bandwidth than most iGPU's? I never thought I would see the day.....eastcoast_pete - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
Yes, that IS amazing and depressing. Just to make people like me (potential buyer/user) feel even worse, compare the bandwidth of this dedicated (!) graphics card to the memory bandwidth in the current gen iPhone*, which is close to 60 Gb/s, and yes, that's with LPDDR4 - but then, Apple uses a 128 bit memory bus. Take a look, Nvidia, it's not that difficult!* I do not own, or have ever owned, an IPhone. makes this even more galling!
Harry_Wild - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
I heard that most video card manufacturer overstated the card's power requirement because a lot of the aftermarket power supplies actually do not deliver their stated wattage. If I known this, I would have not upgrades my power supply!vidal6x6 - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
Yeah... i can run q9550 3.4ghz and a 8600gts on a chinese 500w (200w maximum) but cannot run with my 6770. Thats a lie. New system only pull 1/4 from a core 2 quad era. Thats not chinese worst power supply. But a nvidia boot on users face.Cloylover - Thursday, April 5, 2018 - link
I love the GT 1030 for the fanless design, a now with lower wattage I expect it to work even cooler. It's not in the range of gaming GPU, it is used so no ram is taken from the CPU for graphics. It fits that niche perfectly.xMetaRidley - Sunday, April 8, 2018 - link
It absolutely is in the range of a basic gaming GPU and that might be part of the problem. Gutting the bandwidth is going to make this thing pathetic for gaming and basically a $90 HDMI 2.0 card.albert89 - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
You'll find that the performance and power saving of the GDDR4 GT1030 will be marginal compared with the GT730. But the price will be substantial. Definitely a ripoff to ignorant customers.bennyg - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
The low end stuff has always been the spare parts bin crossed with the lucky dip. Fobbing off stuff onto consumers who don't care or don't knowchrcoluk - Saturday, April 7, 2018 - link
Well I own a 1030 (GDDR5 version), as I needed a GPU for an intel i5 750, these older intel chips have no iGPU. When I got the 1030 I noticed that nvidia owned that segment of the market, the only competition was previous generation nvidia hardware, AMD dont have anything in that price or TDP range. So the lack of competition has meant nvidia can take this kind of action knowing it wont hurt sales. This definitely should be a new SKU, its classic bait and switch.chrcoluk - Saturday, April 7, 2018 - link
Also I am pretty sure this will hurt physx performance, I tested my 1030 out as a physx card, and it had high utilisation on the memory bandwidth during that testing, certainly higher than 33% which is the new DDR4 limit.bananaforscale - Saturday, April 7, 2018 - link
Give it a bigger heatsink and make it passive and it *may* have a market. Maybe.phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
Newegg has a couple different 1030-based, low-profile, passively-cooled cards.Unfortunately, the 1030 only supports two monitors. :(
CheapSushi - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
I would really like if they came out with a "GT 1020" with the DDR4 but in a x1 formfactor. The last x1 card that came out is the Zotac GT 710, in 2016. There's a lot of options now for x4 and x8 slots, low profile, single slot and cheaper/affordable but nothing in x1. There's still a lot of us with empty x1 slots, or have older boards with x1 slots or don't have an iGPU on our CPU; so would be great for servers, workstations, more video ommmph for HTPC. It's the only thing really missing on the current market. A x1 version with DDR4 would make the most sense for this kind of product.