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NVIDIA Releases new Budget GPUs
Dennis Law writes "I was just checking out the latest GPU releases from NVIDIA. Non-gamers will be delighted to hear that NVIDIA also released a budget-edition of their new 7300 series, namely the 7300 LE. 'Targeted at the X1300 LE, this card will be priced lower than the GeForce 7300 GT at a price range of $49 to $69.' Now that's cheap enough for me to afford."
For anything other than vanilla workstations getting a cheap video card usually costs more in the long run than a mid-range card because you have to replace it sooner. This card looks like it has a little bit of power to it. Will it still be able to run most 3D games and apps in three years or will it, like most of these cheapies, have to be replaced yearly? With desktops and apps going 3D more and more it's no longer an issue only for gamers I think.
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Assuming that this is the exact same silicon, now that they have recouped investment, these low end chips may be from piles of accumulated failed chips; chips where only half the shader units passed tests, or where it only operated properly at half speed.
Working on the assumption that, like some other chips (AMD comes to mind), the features on a chip are enabled after a set of tests are run on it, or are enabled in-chip after passing some internal test, it is reasonable to assume that these are from the same silicon as the high end chips, but are faulty in some way, but not faulty enough that they can't be used. I imagine thats the difference between the 7800 GT/GTX - the GT had several (but not too many) failed shader units, and/or operated stably at a bit less speed than the minimum required for GTX classification.
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FOR THE LOVE OF GOD Nvidia, please release a AGP version of your cards. Seriously. There's no way I intend to replace a perfectly good motherboard, CPU, memory, etc just to use a PCI-Express card. I would imagine there are a ton of people in the same boat.
Jeez, VL-Bus got better support after PCI than AGP is after PCI-Express.