MSI 7300LE 128MB PCI-Express Video Card

[BobDaMenkey]

This is a great deal for anyone else like me who had integrated graphics and an open PCI-E slot.

I ran the CS:S stress test at 1280x800 (Native res of my $70 Hot Deals LCD) with Medium/Low settings across the board and no HDR and got 8.4fps with the integrated 6100. With the 7300LE I got 47.xxFPS, which is obviously a huge improvement.

While not a gaming card by any means, it's more than enough to make casual gaming enjoyable at resolution with lower settings. It's by no means as good as the 6800GT I had in AGP, but then again, this hopefully won't die on me every 6 months.

Also MSI's drivers that are included seem to have some kind of auto overclocking built into them. I didn't use them after noticing that on the box, and just downloaded the forcewares directly from nVidia.

 

[ric1287]

is this card low profile? need somthing to get rid of the integrated craphics in my mce box/

 

[v8envy]

Also keep in mind many benchmarks and reviews are of the 7300GT which I believe is 128 bit. the 7300GT LE is 64 bit, and is significantly slower. gpureview implies this card is closer to a 9550 in performance than a 9800.

 

[Liberator21]

I myself just bit on the TigerDirect deal on the XFX 7300Gt, passive and 512mb (512, lol) for $60 AMIR. I was going to suggest that, but it looks like they raised it to $75 and the 8500GT seems like a better deal anyways.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the 7300GT seems to be on par with my old 9800XT. Plays BF2 fine at 1280x1024.

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Originally posted by: nealh

Originally posted by: BIGFOOTPI
yes- pretty much any shader2/3 capable video card will run Aero (although I wouldnt expect too much from the fx5XXX series)
Ive never had luck turning off turbo cache, but its SUPPPOSED to only kick in dynamically when gaming, but with VISTA the card will always be in 3d mode, so... yeah- could lose some usable RAM , but then again if you were serious about running windows VISTA you would have 2GB RAM anyway

I have 2GB of ram...I am only using my machine for Dragon Nat Speaking 9 med...it is a memory hog(no not 2GB but I hate for othe rprograms to use or hold ram for any reason)

do you have this card?

This one doesn't SEEM to use turbo cache, but that's just my observations thus far. It might, but I don't think it does.



edit: My 3000th post on this? D'Oh!

 

[Basilisk]

$44 now...

 

[nealh]

Originally posted by: BobDaMenkey

Originally posted by: nealh

Originally posted by: BIGFOOTPI
yes- pretty much any shader2/3 capable video card will run Aero (although I wouldnt expect too much from the fx5XXX series)
Ive never had luck turning off turbo cache, but its SUPPPOSED to only kick in dynamically when gaming, but with VISTA the card will always be in 3d mode, so... yeah- could lose some usable RAM , but then again if you were serious about running windows VISTA you would have 2GB RAM anyway

I have 2GB of ram...I am only using my machine for Dragon Nat Speaking 9 med...it is a memory hog(no not 2GB but I hate for othe rprograms to use or hold ram for any reason)

do you have this card?

figures..I get this info now after ordering 2 7300gt to make sure of no trubocache issues....ugh

This one doesn't SEEM to use turbo cache, but that's just my observations thus far. It might, but I don't think it does.



edit: My 3000th post on this? D'Oh!