HotHardware reviews MSI NX7300GS TD256E GeForce 7300 GS video card
With most of the fuss revolving around video cards such as Nvidia's 7900 series and ATI's X1900 series these days, it's easy to overlook entry-level offerings such the GeForce 7300. That is unless you don't have a ton of coin to throw down for a high end card. As great as it is using high resolutions with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on a 20" LCD is, it's simply not an affordable option for most of us. Of course, you could always settle for on-board video and save some money, right? Well, if you plan on playing any games or watching HD videos without dropping frames, probably not. So what do you do? What can you do if you don't have enough cash for a graphics powerhouse, but can't stand to deal with the limitations of most integrated video solutions?
Nvidia aims to help out the multitude of people stuck in that exact situation. With their previous GPU architecture, Nvidia introduced TurboCache technology, at first with their GeForce 6200 card. TurboCache allocates system memory to the video card by way of the PCI Express interface, and while it's certainly not as desirable as having copious amounts of high-speed on-board RAM, it is a useful way of adding more effective total frame buffer memory to an entry-level card, while also keeping prices down.
Today we're going to look at MSI's GeForce NX7300GS TD256E which features TurboCache technology. While the NX7300GS TD256E may not sport the same number of pixel shader processors or vertex shaders as a 7900 series product, it does have essentially the same feature set, including support for Shader Model 3.0 and PureVideo. Take a look...
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