MSI brings back the GeForce GT 730 amid graphics card shortages

[midian182]

WTF?! Are you desperate for a graphics card? So desperate, in fact, that you'll take anything, even if it offers the same (or worse) performance as some integrated GPUs? If, for some strange reason, your answer is yes, then MSI is here to answer your prayers with the GeForce GT 730.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, the MSI GeForce GT 730 (N730K-2GD3H/LPV1) is the 13th installment in MSI's GeForce GT 730 lineup. The 700 series first arrived in 2013 and has covered the Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell architectures.

The entry-level GT 730 here features 384 CUDA cores (Kepler version), a 902 MHz boost clock, and 2GB of DDR3 memory operating at 1,600 MHz across a 64-bit memory bus, so it's not the best choice for playing Cyberpunk 2077.

Who needs an RTX 3080 Ti when you can get one of these beauties?

The GT 730 uses just 23W of power—no connecting it directly to a PSU—though MSI does recommend using a 300W power supply. It supports DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.4, and a maximum display resolution of 4,096 x 2,160, but you're limited to a 30fps frame rate. You also get one dual-link DVI-D port, one HDMI 1.4 port, and one D-sub port.

It goes without saying that the GT 730 isn't a great option for gaming. Making it an even less enticing prospect are reports that Nvidia will end support for Kepler in an upcoming GeForce driver. There's also the price; it's selling in Japan for around $42, but we can expect the seven-year-old card to go for about double that in the US. A modern processor with an iGPU would be a better choice, really.

This isn't the first time we've seen companies turn to old products in an attempt to alleviate the graphics card crisis. Nvidia in April starting increasing supply of the GTX 1650, and it seems to have worked. The Turing-based card was the top performer in the last two Steam Hardware surveys, moving up to third place on the most-popular list.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/90011-msi-brings-back-geforce-gt-730-amid-graphics.html

 

[hahahanoobs]

There is sooooo much wrong with this article, but I'll just start with this one....

"There's also the price; it's selling in Japan for around $42, but we can expect the seven-year-old card to go for about double that in the US. A modern processor with an iGPU would be a better choice, really."

Whaaaaaaaaaat?! WTF did I just read?!

 

[dnous]

The sarcasm aside, these cards are ideal for office and fixing old systems. Also an ideal card for if you have a AMD based workstation and you need a simple GPU for just outputting video.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

If I could get my hands on one I'd swap out the 980ti in my plex server that's no longer used for gaming and drop a GT 730 in its place. I just don't want to pay what they're currently selling for - upwards of $120. If I could get one for about $50, I would.

 

[hahahanoobs]

The sarcasm aside, these cards are ideal for office and fixing old systems. Also an ideal card for if you have a AMD based workstation and you need a simple GPU for just outputting video.

Agreed!
Also if you want to build a system now, but just need something to make your PC useable until the prices come down, and even paying $500 for a $150 GPU is a hard NO!

Writer suggested buying a CPU with better graphics instead. I almost literally died laughing.

 

[captaincranky]

There is sooooo much wrong with this article, but I'll just start with this one....

"There's also the price; it's selling in Japan for around $42, but we can expect the seven-year-old card to go for about double that in the US. A modern processor with an iGPU would be a better choice, really."

Whaaaaaaaaaat?! WTF did I just read?!

The truth.

Please refer to my "adventures", with one of these very cards @ post # 27 on
https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/have-you-got-anxiety-when-you-build.253664/post-1882576

FWIW, I paid $49.95 for it, and it was up to $69.95, a couple of weeks later.

It wouldn't run right in a pci-e X 4 slot (times 16 socket), then the driver took a crap, and I had to pull it, (again).

 

[Xex360]

It should be tested to see how it performs in the new games, as it is easily available.

 

[Dimitriid]

I think these are worst than even the entry level AMD Ryzen APUs like the 4350g. It's a step above the intel hd graphics sure, but not by that much.

It's just regrettable that Ryzen APUs are not more widespread but as AMD slowly gains ground on enterprise machines which are all moving towards thin clients anyway, this will be a relic of the past or something to test and get basic video output for when (Sadly, not if) another crypto coin removes all other GPUs from the market.

 

[Bulllee]

I'm getting nostalgic remembering the days when we bought a new card and gave away the older one Times, do indeed, change.
Who could have predicted that cooling would come to the core?

 

[BadThad]

Man, good thing we have IG so prevalent these days. This is a pathetic card only suited for standard desktop work and no gaming. Hard to believe an 8 year old card is being sold at all for anything more than $5.

 

[bexwhitt]

I managed to get a second hand RX570 4gb for £100 which for the sort of games I play (mostly fall guys) is fine

 

[Nobina]

It would make a lot more sense to buy a used old GPU. You will get more performance and they are not selling at inflated prices cause the lack of VRAM makes them useless for mining. Even if you need a GPU just for the output it would be cheaper to buy used.

 

[Bulllee]

Check the prices and good luck.

 

[kiwigraeme]

This reminds me I have some old GPUs sitting in a box in my garage - I bet a few of us do

 

[Lew Zealand]

I have an R5 240 sitting on my desk here, maybe I'll pop it in back the Optiplex 9020 and see if can muster more than the GT 730. Specs are similar but I may only have the 1GB version. Might have to play Ciderpunk 1877 to get decent fps.

 

[arrowflash]

Are they still manufacturing chips like the GT 730 and GT 210? Or is this all old stock? If the latter, I'm surprised with how many of these got made, and I wonder how long it will be until we can finally be free of these cards.

What's next, maybe we will see the 8400GS making a comeback? Or the 6200?

 

[Mjswooosh]

I can't wait to pop a GT 730 in my rig! - said no one, ever.

What problem exactly does nVidia think they are solving by releasing this has been garbage? Insane demand for GPUs is occurring at the mid to high end enthusiast level.

 

[quadibloc]

What problem exactly does nVidia think they are solving by releasing this has been garbage?

It's MSI that decided to release those cards, not Nvidia.
A local retailer in my area has mostly GT 710 cards in stock (even lower-end than this one!) but they have also a few Quadro RTX 4000 cards in stock.

 

[Tom Yum]

The bigger issue is that the 730 is either Fermi or Kepler-based (there are multiple versions), and NVIDIA stopped support for Fermi in 2018 and Kepler this year, so basically no driver updates going forward (a problem mainly for security, game optimisation isn't relevant on something this old and slow). Buying something new that is already EOL from a driver support perspective seems *****ic IMO.

 

[captaincranky]

I think these are worst than even the entry level AMD Ryzen APUs like the 4350g. It's a step above the intel hd graphics sure, but not by that much.

It's just regrettable that Ryzen APUs are not more widespread but as AMD slowly gains ground on enterprise machines which are all moving towards thin clients anyway, this will be a relic of the past or something to test and get basic video output for when (Sadly, not if) another crypto coin removes all other GPUs from the market.

I know it's terribly fashionable to be an AMD fanboy, but the plain truth is that Intel HD-530 & HD-630 will outperform this card too.

 

[Dimitriid]

I know it's terribly fashionable to be an AMD fanboy, but the plain truth is that Intel HD-530 & HD-630 will outperform this card too.

Ok I'll take your word for it, but intel its still so behind on driver support than it's probably not true on many games and basically any game that might be released in the future since they won't be optimized well, at all and in some cases glitch out.

If I can rant for a bit my work computer has a 10850h on it and whenever I am just done booting it will slowly start leaking memory on the dwn.exe process. If left unchecked it will balloon up to 3 or 4gb of ram in a few hours and looking at this issue only had only one solution: downgrade the intel video driver since well, it's just isn't patched.

This being a work computer means that it's not very easy for me to just find some random driver that might work better and install it. So I have to remember to manually kill the process every time I boot and let windows re-run it as that seems to make the issue disappear.

So if there are no options and prices on the 730 were reasonable I might just pick it over intel hd graphics because of stupid crap like that.

 

[captaincranky]

Ok I'll take your word for it, but intel its still so behind on driver support than it's probably not true on many games and basically any game that might be released in the future since they won't be optimized well, at all and in some cases glitch out.

Well, AFAIK, Intel graphics drivers were never intended for gaming. So, perhaps it's a bit unrealistic to expect "optimization updates". The later variants do boast 4K video performance, and that's as much as I would expect from them.

If I can rant for a bit my work computer has a 10850h on it and whenever I am just done booting it will slowly start leaking memory on the dwn.exe process. If left unchecked it will balloon up to 3 or 4gb of ram in a few hours and looking at this issue only had only one solution: downgrade the intel video driver since well, it's just isn't patched.

OK, I can't speak to this at all. My "newest rig", is based on an i5-6600K (HD-530 IGP).IIRC, the IGP ran just fine. But, as with Pinocchio, I "wanted to be a real boy", and a "real boy", deserves, "a real computer". So, I stuffed a GTX-1050 ti in it, (dual fan "FTW" edition). To this day, I don't know if the fans even work, as I haven't gotten the card past the 50 c start fans temp

. For all I know, the card could be broken.

This being a work computer means that it's not very easy for me to just find some random driver that might work better and install it. So I have to remember to manually kill the process every time I boot and let windows re-run it as that seems to make the issue disappear.

Shame on you, trying to game on your work computer.

That said, have you tried apportioning the memory the IGP is permitted to use? As shipped, they'll help themselves to damned near the entire system's RAM.

So if there are no options and prices on the 710 were reasonable I might just pick it over intel hd graphics because of stupid crap like that.

To reiterate, I can't speak to your issues, but........I own a GT-0730 (2 GB) and a GT-710. I can't get either one to run in the systems I had delegated them to.

My idea was to use them in 32 bit systems,to free up system RAM used by the IGP. (Exactly your issue)

The first attempt with the 730 was into a G-41 micro board. This has a X 16 socket, but will only run and only has contacts for a 4 x device..

HUGE fail! The card knocked out DVI altogether, but would run S-VGA at 1080p. However, after a couple of weeks, the driver failed, and the mouse stopped working. (2nd time around installing the card). Back to IGP (Exactly your issue)

Next try with the 730 was into 32 bit XP in a P-43 board. That has a X 16 slot, which probably runs at 8X. Another huge FAIL. I got 1280 1040 res.on the DVI. An attempted run with S-vga netted 1200 x 1600 on a 1920 x 1080 monitor. Back in goes the trusty 9500 GT, end of story.
\
I had thought all this garbage was, "backwards compatible". But that's not true, or so it would seem.

BTW 40 GBs is being claimed for the GDDR5 version of the 730, which, well, still sucks.
By this time, I had already written off the GT-710 as "defective" (??), months earlier.

Keep in mind, the GDDR3 2 GB variant of the GT-730 only has 22.5 GBs memory bandwidth. While the G-41 (w/800 Mhz DDR2 has about 12. However, with 1066 Mhz RAM, that number goes to 18 Gbs. It seemed more sensible at the time to replace the card and extend the VRAM, instead of replacing the system's memory DIMMs. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening!

 

[Dimitriid]

Well, AFAIK, Intel graphics drivers were never intended for gaming. So, perhaps it's a bit unrealistic to expect "optimization updates". The later variants do boast 4K video performance, and that's as much as I would expect from them.

OK, I can't speak to this at all. My "newest rig", is based on an i5-6600K (HD-530 IGP).IIRC, the IGP ran just fine. But, as with Pinocchio, I "wanted to be a real boy", and a "real boy", deserves, "a real computer". So, I stuffed a GTX-1050 ti in it, (dual fan "FTW" edition). To this day, I don't know if the fans even work, as I haven't gotten the card past the 50 c start fans temp

. For all I know, the card could be broken.

Shame on you, trying to game on your work computer.

That said, have you tried apportioning the memory the IGP is permitted to use? As shipped, they'll help themselves to damned near the entire system's RAM.

To reiterate, I can't speak to your issues, but........I own a GT-0730 (2 GB) and a GT-710. I can't get either one to run in the systems I had delegated them to.

My idea was to use them in 32 bit systems,to free up system RAM used by the IGP. (Exactly your issue)

The first with the 730 was attempted into a G-41 micro board. This has a X 16 socket, but will only run and only has contacts for a 4 x device..

HUGE fail! The card knocked out DVI altogether, but would run S-VGA at 1080p. However, after a couple of weeks, the driver failed, and the mouse stopped working. (2nd time around installing the card). Back to IGP (Exactly your issue)

Next try with the 730 32 bit XP in a P-43 board. That has a X 16 slot, which probably runs at 8X. Another huge FAIL. I got 1280 c 1040 res.on the DVI. An attempted run with S-vga netted 1200 x 1600 on a 1920 x 1080 monitor. Back in goes the trusy 9500 GT, end of story.
\
I had thought all this garbage was, "backwards compatible". But that's not true, or so it would seem.
By this time, I had already written off the GT-710 as "defective" (??), months earlier.

Keep in mind, the GDDR3 2 GB variant of the GT-730 only has 22.5 GBs memory bandwidth. While the G-41 (w/800 Mhz DDR2 has about 12. However, with 1066 Mhz RAM, that number goes to 18 Gbs. It seemed more sensible at the time to replace the card and extend the VRAM, instead of replacing the memory DIMMs. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening!

After reading all that...Yeah, we just need AMD APUs for everybody in the enterprise world, can't come soon enough.

Also I do plan on maybe doing some gaming but since I've got a thunderbolt dock with it I think I'm just going to use it to pass an ssd to it since there's a way to boot the laptop from the thunderbold dock storage so that way just one cable gets the machine exactly as IT intended no questions asked but I can still boot Linux or Windows on an SSD attached to it no problems.

 

[captaincranky]

After reading all that...Yeah, we just need AMD APUs for everybody in the enterprise world, can't come soon enough.

OK, I quit, you win.

Also I do plan on maybe doing some gaming but since I've got a thunderbolt dock with it I think I'm just going to use it to pass an ssd to it since there's a way to boot the laptop from the thunderbold dock storage so that way just one cable gets the machine exactly as IT intended no questions asked but I can still boot Linux or Windows on an SSD attached to it no problems.

Speaking of external SSD enclosures, I bought a bunch of Samsung 860 & 870s during recent sales. The plan was, to migrate all my Win 7 OS to larger drives, and keep the existing drives as backups.

So, I ordered 2 Wavlink SSD enclosures, and 2 "Orico" enclosures, The Oricos were shipped directly from China, (from the same wonderful people who brought us the "Kung Flu").

First, the Samsung migration software wouldn't acknowledge its own SSD in the enclosures. I had to install them in the board's SATA array..

That completed, I set about formatting all the extra drives (NTFS), to be used as basically USB sticks, since I don't network any of my machines. Well, the Wavlink cases seem to be working as they should, (you plug a drive into the USB, it appears, unplug it goes away).

No so with the Orico enclosures. You plug them in, and they destroy the boot sequence to the point where you have to go into boot manager and reset it, everytime you try and start the machine(s) I finally got my junk working usng BIOS, "load optimized defaults. I guess I can't send these junk enclosures back, since we're past 30 days, and they only cost $8.50 a pop anyway..
I think "god" (Elon Musk), must be punishing me for saying rude things about him on the internet.

Annndddd, the 730 is back in its anti static bag. (Only god knows to what useful purpose).

 

[Dimitriid]

OK, I quit, you win.

Speaking of external SSD enclosures, I bought a bunch of Samsung 860 & 870s during recent sales. The plan was, to migrate all my Win 7 OS to larger drives, and keep the existing drives as backups.

So, I ordered 2 Wavlink SSD enclosures, and 2 "Orico" enclosures, The Oricos were shipped directly from China, (from the same wonderful people who brought us the "Kung Flu").

First, the Samsung migration software wouldn't acknowledge its own SSD in the enclosures. I had to install them in the board's SATA array..

That completed, I set about formatting all the extra drives (NTFS), to be used as basically USB sticks, since I don't network any of my machines. Well, the Wavlink cases seem to be working as they should, (you plug a drive into the USB, it appears, unplug it goes away).

No so with the Orico enclosures. You plug them in, and they destroy the boot sequence to the point where you have to go into boot manager and reset it, everytime you try and start the machine(s) I finally got my junk working usng BIOS, "load optimized defaults. I guess I can't send these junk enclosures back, since we're past 30 days, and they only cost $8.50 a pop anyway..
I think "god" (Elon Musk), must be punishing me for saying rude things about him on the internet.

Annndddd, the 730 is back in its anti static bag. (Only god knows to what useful purpose).

Funnily enough I recently got an external 3.1 gen 2 SSD from Western Digital since I thought "Well it's certainly decent speeds and prices are cheap enough to replace my dying external hdd I use for videos" and well it worked out great at first....And by first I mean the first 12 hours, after that it froze when trying to read a video to the point that it took down all of explorer.exe and after a reboot that was taking 6 minutes (which is abnormal even for updates and nothing was being updated) I finally unplugged the western digital ssd and it was never detected again, 3 different computers, the drive just died.

I guess I was lucky it died literally inside 24 hours so the return process was pretty painless.

Now I've got myself a simple Sata to USB 3 enclosure and stuck an ASATA 960gb ssd on it too since it was cheap. It's "limited" to regular usb 3 speeds at 5gbps but given the use I have for it which is to replace my archive stuff for videos, songs and ISOs it will do just fine vs questionable nvme based drives that in theory do saturate 10gbps usb 3.2 speeds but in practice well, they either die right away or are way overpriced like the Samsung ones.