eSports Benchmark: GeForce GT 1030 vs. Radeon RX 550

[Julio Franco]

It's time for another GPU battle, though this one is a bit different with GPUs under $100: from AMD we have the Radeon RX 550 and on Nvidia's side is the GeForce GT 1030. Our focus will be primarily on eSports titles including CS:GO, Overwatch and Dota 2 running on a Ryzen 3 test bench.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1488-esports-geforce-gt-1030-vs-radeon-rx-550/

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

At those prices, I'm not sure whether they're anymore viable than the proc's built in IGP. Sure, they will be better but by how much? There must be a market for them otherwise why would the two companies bother with them at all.

 

[Steve]

At those prices, I'm not sure whether they're anymore viable than the proc's built in IGP. Sure, they will be better but by how much? There must be a market for them otherwise why would the two companies bother with them at all.

They are much much faster than any iGPU.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

They are much much faster than any iGPU.

You're the boss so you'll know your oats and I believe you. (y)

 

[Theinsanegamer]

At those prices, I'm not sure whether they're anymore viable than the proc's built in IGP. Sure, they will be better but by how much? There must be a market for them otherwise why would the two companies bother with them at all.

A GT1030 or 550 will be anywhere from 2-3x faster. More importantly, they both have far superior drivers compared to intel's garbage.

AMD's APUs are not really in the running because, while they have the same size GPU (512 shaders, 8 ROPS) it is not only an older arch on 28nm, but it is hamstrung hard by bristol ridge's abysmal CPU and memory controller performance, which chokes the GPU before it gets off the ground.

Now, when raven ridge comes out with a full proper memory controller and proper CPU cores, then GPUs like this will be mostly obsolete. But this is AMD, so dont count on it anytime soon.

 

[B Double]

So no mention of the RX 550 other strength.. Native x265/hevc decode.. Best Home theater card for modern file formats and streaming!

 

[Fobus]

Wouldn't buying used 1 or 2 generations old GPU make more sense?

 

[ET3D]

NVIDIA's architecture is impressive. The 1030 has a 64 bit memory bus, while the 550 has 128 bit. If NVIDIA made integrated graphics, they would have been great. I wonder how the Vega architecture would fare on the low end.

Steve, thanks for the review. Pity you didn't get to more comprehensive testing with the 460/560 and undervolting/underclocking. Just curious how my RX 460 at 50% power (set in WattMan) compares to these in performance.

 

[ET3D]

So no mention of the RX 550 other strength.. Native x265/hevc decode.. Best Home theater card for modern file formats and streaming!

I'm pretty sure the 1030 beats it easily. NVIDIA has had native h.265 for a while, as well as VP9. At least for h.264 encoding (which is what I have experience with), NVIDIA's card offer much better performance and support for higher resolutions.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

@Steve, thanks for good article.

For an IGP system begging for fps and decent drivers, either would do. However, if I was planning to spend, I would want to know that the Direct X and OpenGL are current versions. I would also be strongly inclined to wait on an affordable 4GB VRAM as I recall how my 1GB card was superseded.

I upgraded my AMD 5770 to a GTX 1050 Ti and am very happy with the result. Current popularity has pushed price up and I wonder if your crystal ball might indicate more relaxed prices.

 

[hahahanoobs]

They are much much faster than any iGPU.

You're the boss so you'll know your oats and I believe you. (y)

Or do some research before guessing.

 

[hqxt1964]

Because of the madness of the digital currency, AMD is increasingly looking like a specialist "mining card" manufacturer, and nvidia has been forced to accept high prices after losing the competition.

 

[hahahanoobs]

At those prices, I'm not sure whether they're anymore viable than the proc's built in IGP. Sure, they will be better but by how much? There must be a market for them otherwise why would the two companies bother with them at all.

A GT1030 or 550 will be anywhere from 2-3x faster. More importantly, they both have far superior drivers compared to intel's garbage.

AMD's APUs are not really in the running because, while they have the same size GPU (512 shaders, 8 ROPS) it is not only an older arch on 28nm, but it is hamstrung hard by bristol ridge's abysmal CPU and memory controller performance, which chokes the GPU before it gets off the ground.

Now, when raven ridge comes out with a full proper memory controller and proper CPU cores, then GPUs like this will be mostly obsolete. But this is AMD, so dont count on it anytime soon.

Obsolete? lol
It will be competition that will push Nvidia to do better. Come on now, when AMD is down you want competition, but when Nvidia is down you think AMD is going to push Nvidia out completely with an APU?! The entire low budget dGPU market? You know AMD needs that market too right? Right?! smh....

 

[hahahanoobs]

Because of the madness of the digital currency, AMD is increasingly looking like a specialist "mining card" manufacturer, and nvidia has been forced to accept high prices after losing the competition.

Too bad AMD can't keep their superior cards in stock for gamers resulting in more sales for the Green team. Not sure how that got by you, but any "win" for AMD is good enough for you. eek!

 

[SingularitE]

At those prices, I'm not sure whether they're anymore viable than the proc's built in IGP. Sure, they will be better but by how much? There must be a market for them otherwise why would the two companies bother with them at all.

They are much much faster than any iGPU.

So true, maybe the only exception being the Iris Pro Graphics 580/P580 using GT4e with max 1152 GFLOPS vs RX 550's max 1211 GFLOPS.

 

[Nobina]

Wouldn't buying used 1 or 2 generations old GPU make more sense?

You can always buy a used GPU but it's risky cause you don't know what you're gonna get and you have no warranty.

 

[ManuelV]

Wouldn't buying used 1 or 2 generations old GPU make more sense?

You can always buy a used GPU but it's risky cause you don't know what you're gonna get and you have no warranty.

If you buy it on ebay you can test it for a couple of weeks to see if someone sold you a bad one and after that if it hasnt fail to the original buyer I think is hard to fail. Used and pass generation cards has very good performance and are a lot more cheaper.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Or do some research before guessing.

Nah. I'll let others do the researching for me then they can correct my wild guesses. Now if I was particularly interested, then I would do the research myself. (y)

 

[Evernessince]

Because of the madness of the digital currency, AMD is increasingly looking like a specialist "mining card" manufacturer, and nvidia has been forced to accept high prices after losing the competition.

Too bad AMD can't keep their superior cards in stock for gamers resulting in more sales for the Green team. Not sure how that got by you, but any "win" for AMD is good enough for you. eek!

His comment wasn't praising AMD, just the opposite. Why do you have to jump on anything remotely pro AMD and bash it?

Wouldn't buying used 1 or 2 generations old GPU make more sense?

You can always buy a used GPU but it's risky cause you don't know what you're gonna get and you have no warranty.

Actually allot of used GPUs have a warranty. MSI, EVGA, GIGABYTE, and ASUS all offer transferable warranties. I've personally had less issues with used graphics cards, simply because they've been put in service before so you know they work beforehand. It's not like a video card is going to suddenly stop working after a year of operation unless it's being put in poor conditions.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Used GPU FTW at this price point, even without a warranty.

 

[Reehahs]

At those prices, I'm not sure whether they're anymore viable than the proc's built in IGP. Sure, they will be better but by how much? There must be a market for them otherwise why would the two companies bother with them at all.

They are much much faster than any iGPU.

People should refer to iGPU as ***** GPU rather than integrated if used for gaming.

 

[Ascaris]

Only one of them supports Windows 8.1... team green it is (or it would be if I was going to buy one of these two).

 

[Boilerhog146]

Maybe. The low profile and passive hs.would get one in the htpc.but no. I would spend more.
The budget gamer maybe..bought an oem with igp only.but neither for any decent gaming rig.Imo.

 

[shark975]

One thing this article ignores for cheapos is freesync vs gsync. Gysnc adds a hundreds of dollar monitors tax strait to Nvidia. Sure many fanboys love giving $ to Nvidia, many more will shun any Vsync tech cause they cant afford Gsync, proving all the Pc gamer talk about pure framerates is nonsense, those people would sooner give up smooth frames than give up paying Nvidia. So they avoid freesync like the plague due to their Nvidia bias (we know there are millions like this).

Anyways me though I dont PC game a ton so it's not high priority, but I see 1080P freesync monitors becoming very cheap I kinda want a new monitor anyway, mine is fine but it's old so it has a thick unattractive bezel).

So yeah basically I'm limited to AMD because of freesync (ability to buy cheap freesync monitors in the future), an option the article ignores. Even though because AMD cards are more efficient at cryptomining, they are often the worse deal right now, higher priced due to cryptomining.

Point being GT1030, 1050 or 1050Ti is a better deal (maybe) for my low end needs, but I would probably buy an RX560 instead for freesync. The article ignores this aspect.

 

[alansmith]

+1 for the freesync (shark975)- I'd forgotten about that too but it really should be taken into consideration. How much difference does it make? It really should be added to the review as well as the difference that g-sync makes. I accept that not many would buy a 1030 and a g-sync monitor but there is also the possibility that your readers already have a g-sync or freesync monitor.

Any chance of completing this review with a part 2?