The GeForce GT 730 card was released for the first time by Nvidia on June 18, 2014. Micro-Star International, the Taiwanese manufacturer partner of Nvidia, under its MSI brand, also put its cards on the market. This card is available online for around €60.
Features of the GeForce GT 730 card
GeForce GT 730 card is an entry-level Nvidia card. It operates at 902 MHz in normal use. The board is based on the Fermi architecture . This card has 2 GB of DDR3 memory running at 1.8 GHz . It transmits data on the 128-bit bus with a bandwidth of 25.6 Gb/s . It is equipped with a PCIe 2.0 16x interface to be inserted on the motherboard. The GT 730 measures 6.9 x 3.8 x 14.6 centimeters and weighs approximately 300 grams.
The card has 3 video outputs: 1 VGA, 1 HDMI and 1 DVI. This card can thus be used to upgrade CPUs which only have a VGA output. The upgraded CPU could thus be connected to new generation devices using DVI or HDMI video input connectors. The GT 730 is in Low Profile Format, which allows it to be placed on any CPU on the market.
Performance of the GeForce GT 730 card
The GeForce GT 730 has 96 shader processors and 585 million transistors integrated into its GPU. 40 -nanometer etching process and has 96 CUDA cores . This card consumes a TDP power of 49 Watts . power supply box of the PC hosting the GT 730 would then be 300 Watts. For texturing speed, the GT 730 transfers 11.2 GT/s . For comparison, the all-new Radeon RX 6900XT transfers data at 771.2 GT/s. The GT 730 processes 268.8 floating point gflops. This card supports the following features and API: DirectX 12, Shader 5.1, OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 1.1 and CUDA 2.1
MSI is well known for its good quality components. The capacitors have a lifespan of approximately 10 years. The MSI GT 730 is quiet because the design of the cooling system has been well thought out. Thanks to the imposing radiator placed all along the card, the GPU and memory do not overheat. The ESR is therefore lower. The GT 730 provides a maximum analog resolution of 2048 x 1536 and a maximum digital resolution of 2560 x 1600. It can support 2 simultaneous displays.
The hardware limitations on the GT 730 are overcome by the various software features supported by the card to boost its performance. The card notably supports Microsoft DirectX 12, NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready, NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync, NVIDIA CUDA Technology with OpenCL support, NVIDIA FXAA Technology, NVIDIA PhysX technology, NVIDIA PureVideo HD Technology, NVIDIA TXAA Technology, etc.
DirectX 12 allows multitasking of graphics instructions. With DirectX 11, graphics tasks were grouped on a single CPU core, which resulted in quite noticeable processing latency. On the other hand, with DirectX 12, graphics tasks can be distributed across different CPU cores. Which makes treatments quick and smooth.
NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready allows the card to support stereoscopic 3D displays and glasses. The card therefore provides a Full HD resolution that is quite fluid and without breakage to the delight of 3D game enthusiasts.
The GT 730 supports NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync . When enabled, it helps prevent stuttering and image breakage in the output. We generally observe jerky images when the frame rate is quite low and broken images at too high FPS. Adaptive Vertical Sync thus activates V-Sync when the frame rate is too high to avoid image breakage and deactivates it when the frame rate is too low to provide non-jerky images.
NVIDIA FXAA Technology ensures minimal processing time by using a post-processing shader which analyzes images and only processes areas that are quite different. So this is NVIDIA's anti-aliasing system in response to AMD's MLAA. The GT 730 also supports TXAA . The latter helps reduce flicker. It effectively manages anti-aliasing but consumes more.
PhysX allows you to take advantage of a physics engine that provides realistic effects. It is a processing engine initially created by AGEIA but which was purchased by Nvidia in 2008. It also allows the 96 CUDA cores of the GT 730 to take care of certain calculations, thus relieving the CPU of certain loads. The CPU will then be able to handle other, more important tasks. The whole would thus be more efficient and will not suffer from saturation. PhysX is indeed supported by cards such as the GT 730 having more than 32 CUDA cores and 256 MB of memory.
GeForce GT 730 benchmarking
On Fortnite, the GT 730 manages to provide a frame rate of 47.5 FPS at 720p . On the other hand, if we increase the output resolution, the GT 730 reaches its limits. In ultra 1080p, we obtain 3.5 FPS and in QHD the average frame rate obtained is around 0.5 FPS. This card can therefore be used in 720p resolution and lower. It is not recommended for playing beyond this resolution, because you will have less fluid or even jerky images.
Comparing the GT 730 with cards of the same generation, we see that it falls between the Radeon E6760 and the Radeon R7 M260DX. The latter displays a performance equivalent to the GT 730 while the Radeon E6760 is at -2.8%.
On 3GD Mark , the GeForce GT 730 graphics card has a score of 801 . This is relatively low compared to the other cards tested. To get an idea of its performance, the Radeon R7 370 card scores 4,257, the Radeon R9 280 scores 4,776. Other newer cards such as the Radeon RX 5700 XT and GeForce RTX 2070 Super have scores 16,718 and 18,116 respectively.
When testing the GeForce GT 730 on 3DMark , it obtained a score of 295 . Cards that have a similar score are the NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 (3DMark score 192), the Intel HD Graphics 5500 (3DMark score 233), the Intel Iris Graphics 520 (3DMark score 317), and the NVIDIA GeForce 920M (3DMark score 327).
If we now compare the cards with similar initial recommended prices from manufacturers (MSRP) as well as the respective 3DMark scores. The GT 730 card beats the GeForce GT 710 cards (3DMark score 192) and the GT 610 (3DMark score 88). However, it is well below the AMD Radeon RX 550 (3DMark score 1203) and NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 (3DMark score 1088)
