Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unbox today we're looking at what is the worst graphics card ever released well certainly in the last decade before I continue with that though imagine you're a gamer on a seriously tight budget no no it's likely that a lot of you won't have to be too creative after all PC gaming is just something that most of us do to unwind after a day at work so relax a bit have a bit of fun so not everyone can afford to invest hundreds upon hundreds of dollars in PC gaming when there are other bills to be paid you might also be a young kid getting into PC gaming and computing in general for that matter and that can be tough for some most parents are going to be more interested in the idea of buying a console than a computer which I feel is a mistake but let's not get into that here point is these people don't have endless money to spend on upgrading or building a new PC so they're after an affordable graphics card and more often than not they're also just getting started on their PC gaming journey so they aren't super experienced when it comes to buying a new graphics card some light research will show you that sub $100 us graphics cards such as the GT 1030 is capable of delivering over 60 fps in fortnight at 1080p using competitive quality settings so for most that will be enough and although something like a gtx 1050 is only about $30 us more the GT 1030 does what you need so why spend the extra money of course we could come up with a few good reasons but we understand why so many people buy these entry-level graphics cards so you've seen the benchmarks you know your system can produce at least 60 FPS with the GeForce GT 1030 so you buy one for the typical asking price of $90 us however what you don't know is that not all GT 1030 graphics cards are the same not even close you could buy a GT 1030 that will indeed spit out over 60 fps in fortnight at 1080p or you could be getting one that barely keeps the framerate above 30 fps the problem for you is they both have the same name the exact same name you might expect the version that's around 50% slower it'd be called something like the GT 1030 alley or GT 1030 se or better yet a completely different name like the GT 1020 for example instead though NVIDIA has decided to grossly misled customers into thinking lgt 1030 graphics cards are equal so what exactly is going on here then well more than a year ago now back in May of 2017 and video released the GT 1030 as the most affordable GPU in the GeForce ten series it came in an MSRP of just $70 u.s. and packed on an 84 CUDA cores clocked at 1.2 eight gigahertz with a boost frequency of one point four seven gigahertz and the gddr5 memory was clocked at 1.5 gigahertz and using a mere 64-bit wide memory bus provided a bandwidth of 48 gigabytes per second the GT 1030 wasn't blowing any socks off but it was what it was an ultra affordable current generation GPU however as of March 2018 budget shoppers could no longer buy a GT 1030 and know exactly what they were getting at least without taking note of the type of memory used this is because Nvidia quietly introduced a ddr4 version using the type of memory modern desktop PCs use as system memory this is a massive problem because ddr4 memory is significantly slower than gddr5 memory firstly the memory base frequency has been reduced by 30% and as bad as that sounds the end result is far worse gddr5 memory has two parallel links which provide double the i/o throughput when compared to ddr4 this means the memory frequency has actually been reduced by 65% and because we're still using the same 64 bit wide memory bus this also means the memory bandwidth has been reduced by 65 percent down from an already anemic 48-year bytes per second the end result sees the ddr4 version of the GT 1030 with a 16 point eight gigabytes per second link to its two gigabyte memory buffer that's only slightly more bandwidth in the misérable ddr3 version of the geforce GT 730 released back in 2014 then for whatever reason NVIDIA has also cut down the core frequency dropping the ddr4 version down to one point one five gigahertz which is a six percent reduction okay so the ddr4 version has way less memory bandwidth but has the same name and looking around online seems to come in and about the same price so as a potential GT 1030 how worried should you be Nvidia didn't feel the need to change the name so can it really be that different well we're about to find out for testing all graphics cards were benchmarked on our core i3 80-100 test system with 8 gigabytes of ddr4 2666 memory and also thrown in for comparison is the Rison 5 2400 G APU using its integrated vaguer 11 graphics with 8 gigabytes of ddr4 2666 memory ok let's get into the results for testing battlefield 1 we've gone with the low quality preset now normally we test low-end graphics cards and even ap use with the medium quality settings in this title but at 720p the GT 1030 ddr4 version was barely able to deliver playable performance using the low quality preset did allow for 51 FPS on average and that doesn't seem too bad that is until you realize the gddr5 version is 104 percent faster moving to 1080p and now the ddr4 version of the GT 1030 can't even achieve 30 FPS using the lowest possible quality settings are you kidding me The Horizon 520 400g apu is 64% faster and way worse than that is the fact that the gddr5 version the original GT 1030 is 118 percent faster 118 % I'm not even sure what to say about that right now so let's just move on using the lowest possible quality settings in pray at 720p the G ddr4 GT 1030 did manage to average just over 60 fps and again that meant the gddr5 model was roughly twice as fast upping the resolution of 1080p and now the gddr5 model is more than twice as fast as the pathetic ddr4 version again we see that with the lowest possible quality settings enabled the ddr4 version can't even achieve 30 FPS on average far cry 5 is a new title and it's fairly well optimized but if you bought the ddr4 version of the GT 1030 you're gonna have a bad time even at 720p using the lowest possible quality things we couldn't average 30 fps meanwhile the gddr5 model was almost 80% faster and that's the smallest much and we've seen yet here are the cherry pea results and really what can you say even the gddr5 version of the GT 1030 sucks here but the ddr4 model it's really something else pure garbage is what it is although dirt 4 was playable using the lowest possible quality settings it was still a far cry from what the gddr5 versions are capable of at 1080p the ddr4 version dips well below 60 FPS while the gddr5 model was able to keep the framerate above 80 FPS at all times I suspect a lot of the GT 1030 graphics cards currently being purchased by those wanting to get into fortnight and if true those who got caught out by the ddr4 version will be livid results like these will show the GT 1030 pushing over 100 FPS at all times using the medium quality settings at 720p the duty r4 version though struggles to get the dips above 60 FPS but I guess it's playable so there is that of course most won't want to play at 720p if they can avoid it and avoid it they can't with the ddr4 version here we see just 38 FPS on average will hold the original GT 1030 span at an average of 66 fps moving on the rocket link and here we see just 60 FPS an average of 720p using the in-game quality preset named quality in this instance the gddr5 model was almost 90% faster with 114 FPS on average then at 1080p the G ddr4 GT 1030 scrapes by with 32 FPS on average and at this more memory intensive resolution the gddr5 model was 122 % faster just ridiculous that is the last game we're going to look at is Rainbow six siege and here we see even when using the lowest possible quality options at 720p the ddr4 GT 1030 is good for 73 FPS which isn't bad apart from the fact that the gddr5 model is almost 80% faster with 130 FPS then once again at 1080p this seriously limited ddr4 models performance is heavily limited and here we saw an average of just 39 FPS making the gddr5 model 65% fast now not that it matters in the least but here are the power consumption figures because the memory is choking the GPU the ddr4 version uses less power reducing total system consumption by 16% that said given we often saw a 50% reduction in performance that actually makes the TDR for version significantly worse in terms of performance per watt Wow where do I even start with a product like this I'm actually still coming to terms with the fact that this product even exists how the bloody hell does this exist actually I should be clear about this as rubbish as this ddr4 version of the GT 1030 years I don't have too much of a problem with its existence it probably shouldn't exist but the fact that it does isn't the real issue here the real issue is Nvidia had the goal to call it a GT 1030 and not a GT 1020 for example I don't even know how they can get away with doing that as we saw it was often 50% slower than the gddr5 version yet it has the exact same name and price again how is this possible it's not like we were trying to cripple performance or test under some unusual condition either to make it look worse than it really is almost all the games tested we're done so using the lowest possible quality preset at 720p and 1080p the gddr5 model can actually handle higher visual quality settings at 1080p and doing so would further cripple the ddr4 version so we're actually showing a best-case scenario if anything I can't imagine how up side be if I've been saving up bit by bit for weeks on end to upgrade my graphics card only to end up with that thing I'd never trust in video again I also couldn't imagine ever buying a geforce product for the rest of my life and I'd also be very upset with the retail sobbing the product even though I probably realize at the time that it wasn't necessarily their fault actually that led me to reach out to a few of our local retail to see what their take was on the ddr4 version of the GT 1030 and do they ever see any kind of backlash from this sort of thing for obvious reasons I won't name any of the retailers but I can tell you what they told me and they all said pretty much the same thing for the big issue for retailers is that they often don't know the exact models that they're buying and I know that sounds a bit silly but it doesn't make sense the people in these purchasing roles often aren't computer geeks computer nerds whatever term you'd like to use there and they pay attention to things like product codes and pricing not the type of memory the graphics card uses they'll see that GT 1030 stock is low and they'll order more GT 1030 stock and it's not like each brand only has a single GT 1030 model even before the ddr4 mass most brands offered four to five different models it sounds like a lot of the people in these purchasing roles unknowingly bought up ddr4 GT 1030 stock just assuming it was the same gddr5 models that they'd been buying for the past year the specs are often supplied and then just copy and paste it onto the website and again this isn't anything unusual almost all of them admitted that if it wasn't for the controversy around the spec change they would have been none the wiser and it would have been just pure chance if they happen to notice the change at all they also said unless the model name has changed or there is some obvious difference this stuff generally goes under the radar this then causes massive issues for these retailers as they are unknowingly selling their customers inferior products and that's not something they want to do for obvious reasons a reputation really is everything in this business so Nvidia aren't just hurting their customers they're also hurting the retailers as well as their own board partners this really is a bad look for anyone involved again I really don't know how this kind of thing happens in the first place but yes I am painfully aware this isn't the first time a new video has done something like this and I also aware that AMD recently dabbled with the dodgy naming as well though nothing as horrific as this anyway this kind of crap has to stop and I hope big youtubers you know the guys with 1 million plus hubs and other large media outlets do their own testing and show their viewers and readers what's going on here I think gamers Nexus were the first of the punch on this one showing actual benchmarks late last month so good on them for doing that great work as always we were a bit slow getting this dumpster fire down under but tea now so fellow Ozzy's be warned we were always in video right gonna be too happy with this video and we won't be surprised if we don't receive samples for the generation GPU launch be a real shame if that is the case but if it is not the end of the world we'll just have to buy the GPUs ourselves and on that note if you would like to support us directly and gain access to a few cool perks like our discord chat monthly livestream then you can check out our patreon account the link is in the video description anyway I hope you enjoyed this video I'm your host Steve and I'll see you again next time