Will twice the memory give this video card a much-needed boost?
PC games require quite a bit of memory at times, and certainly so with the settings all on high, and Anti-Aliasing at full. But to do this requires a lot of grunt behind the memory space - does this card have enough to justify the extra memory?
Plugged into a bright azure PCB, the RV730 PRO core runs at stock speeds of 650MHz, and is built on the decidedly miniature 55nm manufacturing process. There is a lot of memory here, a whole gigabyte of it in fact - just a shame that it is the very slow DDR2 running at only 450MHz. This means that the bandwidth between the memory and the core is very limiting, which as you'll read just below, definitely harms the performance. A 128-bit memory interface is acceptable, but twice this is really needed to squeeze the best potential out of the aging memory.
The cooler on the card is similar to other low-end GIGABYTE offerings, a small black anodized aluminium lump with a fan, and a mock-gold cover over the top. With those elements combined, the cooler does look rather impressive, though the intricate design can make the rest of the card seem boring in comparison. Outputs are taken care of in the form of VGA, DVI and HDMI - great for those with older monitors, or even TV screens.
Performance is rather underwhelming, and compared to the Sapphire 4650 we can see a significant drop across all benchmarks - the slower memory here really starves the core. The temperatures don't get especially high, with 40 idle and 48 load, but the noise sits at a constant 75.5dBA - enough to drive you up the walls, through the ceiling, and halfway to Mars. We'd definitely pick something else, but if the price is right and your tranquility doesn't matter, this is a decent card.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012