BFGTech GeForce 7300 GT OC @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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BFGTech GeForce 7300 GT OC - Looking for a gaming video card that won't devour your wallet? We evaluate the BFGTech GeForce 7300 GT OC and see how it compares to the competition in several of today’s popular games.

At its current price of $93 the BFGTech GeForce 7300 GT OC bested it's similarly priced Sapphire Radeon X1300 PRO competitor in all of the games we tested. It certainly won't be winning any performance crowns but it will run all current generation games out there.
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Good read. Looks like a promising video card for someone who doesn't play a lot of heavy games, however it should run UT2k4 and CS 1.6 with no problems.
 
Not a bad card for $100, especially since it can overclock pretty nicely. This is great card for a cheap machine, old games, and/or if you just need a DVI output.
 
Nice article. It definately looks like a card for someone without high gaming expectations or for a backup PCI-e rig where there isn't a need for a powerhouse card.
 
I still don't understand this card. Why do people spend $93 on an extreme budget gaming card when the 7600GT can be had for as low as $99AR at newegg?

In my mind, you have your office cards (6200 turbo cache, etc), and then if you're doing any gaming the 7600GT is the minimum and is within a reasonable price range. Am I missing the boat?

The article was good though. I'd like to see a comparison to the 7600GT for reference, but I guess that's not the point of the article :).
 
If you will notice this is a brand new editor, and it took him a couple of months to finish his first evaluation. The landscape had changed a bit since then. A longer prep time is something we have to sometimes sacrifice to real world gameplay rather than running 5 canned benchmarks overnight and calling a winner. Sorry you find the evaluation lacking.
 
kirbyrj said:
I still don't understand this card. Why do people spend $93 on an extreme budget gaming card when the 7600GT can be had for as low as $99AR at newegg?

In my mind, you have your office cards (6200 turbo cache, etc), and then if you're doing any gaming the 7600GT is the minimum and is within a reasonable price range. Am I missing the boat?

The article was good though. I'd like to see a comparison to the 7600GT for reference, but I guess that's not the point of the article :).
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Looking at the BFGTech lineup on Newegg:

7300 GT we evaluated - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143067 $93

7600 GT - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143049 $144 with a $30 MIR makes it $114

BTW we evaluated the BFGTech 7600 GT OC a long while ago - http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTAzOCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

We have another 7600 GT evaluation planned also with some newer games
 
I understand that, but as a completely lazy American, I just like to see the comparisons in the same article (or links back to similar cards in the article) rather than remembering that I saw an article before and then go looking for it. For the intended purpose, I think the article was good. I'm not here to bash you guys at all. I think you do good work :).

I guess my only "gripe" is that I don't think if you were asked for your honest opinion as to what card to get you wouldn't recommend the 7300GT under any circumstances. I have a feeling you'd recommend the $20 upgrade to a 7600GT (Biostar was $99AR) or get a X800GTO ($79 at newegg is the cheapest for a Diamond OEM). But then again, I don't run a website or have advertising dollars being waved at me either :) (I don't mean that in a derogatory way...I'm a VP of a small business and I understand how things like that work).
 
Would it be possible to start testing the "extra" parts of cards, like the composite cables that came with this card? I'd like to know that all the aspects of the card operate as they should - having been burned in the past by the 6800GT that I got (where not all the advertised aspects of the card ever functioned, nor were they enabled by the drivers that Nvidia promised) it'd be great to have a review that does more than just test video games.

 
Spelling mistake on the Oblivion page:

The Sapphire Radeon X1300 PRO would go strait to the 20's in frames per second with those settings enabled no matter the resolution and anti aliasing combination.
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This mistake pops up at least one other time, on the Sims page, as well.
 
Just for giggles, has anyone seen 2 of these in SLI? What would it's performance compare to - maybe a 7600GT?

If anyone has seen this or done it, I'd love to read about it.
 
About the SLi question, rather unreasonable considering you could get a 7900GS for about the price of two 7300GTs. 7300GT SLi = $83x2= $166. 7900GS = $165. But that is beside the point. On THG's VGA charts, they only have the 7300GS in SLi, not the GT. Even with it, the 7600GT is faster in many/all tests.

About the 7300GT at $80 and a 7600GT at $100. It is only $20 more. But then another faster card is just another twenty away. And then another twenty is a even faster card. But now you are spending $60 more than you intended. I agree, it would just be better to save up another $20 and be done with it, though!

Nice review, but if I'm getting a low-end card, I'll stick with my 512MB 7100GS, :D.

Should be noted that the X1300XT is also available, but offers minimal speed increases, per Neoseeker's review.

Does anyone else think that ATI's naming scheme is running in circles? Look at this:

X1300
X1300 Pro
X1300 XT
X1600
X1600 Pro
X1600 XT
X1650 Pro
X1650XT

Damn. And half those cards are the same, the X1300XT is just a renamed X1600. And so on...

~Ibrahim~

P.S. Awaiting that 7600GT review! Be nice if you threw in some X16xx numbers.
 
I bought one of these to finish off a PC I was building with a Athlon64 3500+.

Have to say I was really impressed with the power this little card puts out. I had BF2 running at medium/high settings at 1280 res and it was still perfectly playable.

For £55 its a quantum leap from the cards we used to have to buy at that price level a few years ago.
 
"At its current price of $93 the BFGTech GeForce 7300 GT OC bested it's similarly priced Sapphire Radeon X1300 PRO competitor in all of the games we tested. It certainly won't be winning any performance crowns but it will run all current generation games out there."

Misuse of "it's" in the above sentence. Should be "its."

I see this all the time on this website (and many others too, just to be fair to [H]ardOCP).
 
I had one of the leadtek 7300GT cards, it was $80 when I bought it. It was a great card for me, since I play primary old games and I just needed to finish off a different computer. Looking back, the 7600GT's were still far more expensive then ($140AR at best) but the 7600GS was still the cheap-o king.

In the article it mentions how BFG chose to use a full-height PCB. I thought that the 7300GT's are actually 7600GT cores, just with 8 pipelines and DDR2 memory. The 7300GT, 7600GS and 7600GT are all essentially the same card, and the PCB isn't available in half height. The 7300GS and 7300LE are available in half-height though.

I like reviews on lower-end and mid-range parts, because honestly that's what I know will be more useful to me. Looking forward to more from this reviewer.
 
davidober said:
"At its current price of $93 the BFGTech GeForce 7300 GT OC bested it's similarly priced Sapphire Radeon X1300 PRO competitor in all of the games we tested. It certainly won't be winning any performance crowns but it will run all current generation games out there."

Misuse of "it's" in the above sentence. Should be "its."

I see this all the time on this website (and many others too, just to be fair to [H]ardOCP).
Click to expand...

As an addition to that post, IIRC, it's is only used as a contraction of "it is", its is used all other times?
 
They don't seem to be available in the US, but in other countries the 7300GT is available with GDDR3, clocked at 520/700 instead of 350/333.
 
davidober said:
"At its current price of $93 the BFGTech GeForce 7300 GT OC bested it's similarly priced Sapphire Radeon X1300 PRO competitor in all of the games we tested. It certainly won't be winning any performance crowns but it will run all current generation games out there."

Misuse of "it's" in the above sentence. Should be "its."

I see this all the time on this website (and many others too, just to be fair to [H]ardOCP).
Click to expand...

Fixed, thank you
 
ep1taph said:
I had one of the leadtek 7300GT cards, it was $80 when I bought it. It was a great card for me, since I play primary old games and I just needed to finish off a different computer. Looking back, the 7600GT's were still far more expensive then ($140AR at best) but the 7600GS was still the cheap-o king.

In the article it mentions how BFG chose to use a full-height PCB. I thought that the 7300GT's are actually 7600GT cores, just with 8 pipelines and DDR2 memory. The 7300GT, 7600GS and 7600GT are all essentially the same card, and the PCB isn't available in half height. The 7300GS and 7300LE are available in half-height though.

I like reviews on lower-end and mid-range parts, because honestly that's what I know will be more useful to me. Looking forward to more from this reviewer.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear it, and thanks for reading

We've done a slew of low-end - mainstream cards lately, check out our evals here - http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/reviews.html?cat=MyxWaWRlbyBDYXJkLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0
 
Perfect, that XFX card should be perfect, for those looking how the highly OCable 7600GT compares with the X1650XT...Might give the 7600GT the edge it needs. Can you include some OC'ed X1650XT benchmarks as well?

~Ibrahim~
 
HardOCP always deliver excellent and useful evaluation.
I am not familiar with USA market, but I often see GDDR3 7300GT roaring all around in Taiwan.
(but alas, no Taiwan website would evaluation with such quality, and actually, far from that)
Is that the same scene in USA too?
To my honest, I mere find GDDR2 7300GT in my place :)
(due to the diff between GDDR2 to GDDR3 almost <5 USD)

And worse is the GDDR3 version 7300GT always have exceed high configuration
Most from 500/1200 to 600/1400 (Elsa)
And it is extremely hard to evaluate such a 7300GT even we know the "Baseline"
Because with this config, choice between 7600GS and 7300GT GDDR would became confused.

So if there can be a 7300GT GDDR3 config evaluation, there would be perfect :)
 
kirbyrj said:
I still don't understand this card. Why do people spend $93 on an extreme budget gaming card when the 7600GT can be had for as low as $99AR at newegg?

In my mind, you have your office cards (6200 turbo cache, etc), and then if you're doing any gaming the 7600GT is the minimum and is within a reasonable price range. Am I missing the boat?

The article was good though. I'd like to see a comparison to the 7600GT for reference, but I guess that's not the point of the article :).
Click to expand...

The 7600GT is a bit more money up front. Sometimes people only have a certain amount of money to spend then and there, or nothing at all, so they have to work with what they have. Rebates are nice, but they don't help when you only have $100 to spend, yet want a $130+ videocard.
 
I still don't understand this card. Why do people spend $93 on an extreme budget gaming card when the 7600GT can be had for as low as $99AR at newegg?
Click to expand...
You'll notice the article also makes the point that there's better cards for your buck.


I am not familiar with USA market, but I often see GDDR3 7300GT roaring all around in Taiwan.
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Yes that is true, however, there seem to be no manufacturers still selling GDDR3 7300GT OC cards in the US anymore.
 
It says SLi ready on the box, yet there's no SLi connector...

I smell false advertising :rolleyes:
 
DoomRulz said:
It says SLi ready on the box, yet there's no SLi connector...

I smell false advertising :rolleyes:
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I don't think you need the SLI connector to run SLI.
 
Interesting read and I too am glad to see the full spectrum of cards covered rather than only the "flagships." However, I did not see mentioned either in the article or in the previous comments some very important features that will be needed by most next year. That is MS Vista, DirectX 10, and HDCP support. I realize that this is difficult or even impossible to test now but it should at least be mentioned in the article if the card does or does not support each. This market segment tends to hold onto their equipment for longer periods before upgrading compared to the high-end segment. Just some thoughts. Thanks for work HardOCP.
 
DoomRulz said:
It says SLi ready on the box, yet there's no SLi connector...

I smell false advertising :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

For the 7300 series you do not need an SLI connector, all communication is handled over the PCIe bus.
 
for overclocking i would like to see atleast one game where you compair stock to max oc and see if any settings could be raised or something.
 
Bought a 3D Fusion (BFG) 7300GS 6 months ago from circut city @ 99$. Overclocked very well. Was able to take it up 200MHz on the core.
Cheers to BFG
 
Anyone know if the extra quad on the 7300 is unlockable? Perhaps a vmod available?

Those budget cards are usually capable of so much more..
 
:eek:

If I had known that it did that good earlier, I woulda grabbed one...

I saw one in retail packaging (albeit beat to all hell) at a compusa for 75$...

they had a few random video cards in a clearance bin...

I lold when they wanted 180$ for a 7600GT :p
 
Good read - I'm planning on upgrading my Kids' computer soon and I had not considered the 7300GT until reading this article.
Right now, they have an XP2600+, 1.5GB o' RAM, and a BFG 6800GT (my old card) and I'd like to move them to an A64 platform and may as well go with a PCI-e vid card. The wife would get the 6800GT as an upgrade to her current 6800oc (she has an XP3200+ currently).
It will be a toss up if they get a 7600GT or 7300GT, we'll have to see what budget we have, most likely will go s939 since they have good ram already and I don't thnk that DDR2 is in the budget.

Good write up, and worth the wait

 
somecallmeTim said:
Good read - I'm planning on upgrading my Kids' computer soon and I had not considered the 7300GT until reading this article.
Right now, they have an XP2600+, 1.5GB o' RAM, and a BFG 6800GT (my old card) and I'd like to move them to an A64 platform and may as well go with a PCI-e vid card. The wife would get the 6800GT as an upgrade to her current 6800oc (she has an XP3200+ currently).
It will be a toss up if they get a 7600GT or 7300GT, we'll have to see what budget we have, most likely will go s939 since they have good ram already and I don't thnk that DDR2 is in the budget.

Good write up, and worth the wait

Click to expand...

Definitely get the 7600GT. Better performance for the relative price.
 
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