COLORFUL GT 1030 2G Review

There’s a huge market for entry level graphics cards – one that’s needed by the enterprise, home users who wish to step up their HTPCs, and anyone looking for better solutions than what integrated graphics can provide that doesn’t come with too steep of a price tag. In that sense, NVIDIA has brought about the $70 GeForce GT 1030 to fill in this need. And what we have at the moment is COLORFUL’s GT 1030 to see if it can hold out as a proper budget graphics card.

There’s a huge market for entry level graphics cards – one that’s needed by the enterprise, home users who wish to  step up their HTPCs, and anyone looking for better solutions than what integrated graphics can provide that doesn’t come with too steep of a price tag. In that sense, NVIDIA has brought about the $70 GeForce GT 1030 to fill in this need. And what we have at the moment is COLORFUL’s GT 1030 2G to see if it can hold out as a proper budget graphics card.

 About the COLORFUL GT 1030

In terms of specifications, the COLORFUL GT 1030 2G features a 1227MHz base clock and 1468 boost clock with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, which are also the stock specifications by NVIDIA. The company was also silent when it comes to its announcement for the GT 1030, and needless to say there's no Founder's Edition of the card.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
GPU	GeForce GT 1030
Code Name	GP108
Manufacturing Process	14nm FinFET
CUDA Cores	384
Base Clock	1227MHz
Boost Clock	1468MHz
Memory Clock	6000MHz
Memory Size	2GB
Memory Bus Width	64-bit
Memory Type	GDDR5
DirectX / Shader Model	DirectX 12
Connectivity	1*HDMI 2.0b + 1*DVI-D

PACKAGING

The COLORFUL GT 1030 2G arrives in quite a compact box. It’s presented in a rather gaming-oriented design through its blazing fire dragon, and then printed around it are the basic features and technical specifications of the card.

As far as the inclusion goes, COLORFUL’s GT 1030 is pretty much as basic as it gets. There’s the GT 1030 itself all wrapped in anti-static plastic, plus a manual and a driver CD. Both of which probably won’t be put to good use, but it’s good to have it just in case your yet to be initiated or you just want to read up some stuff.

DESIGN

Gotta admit, COLORFUL’s design with the GT 1030 makes it as one of the most engaging designs out of the 1030s out there. Its shroud covers the majority of the PCB and extends over it by 10mm, and it looks nicely in comparison with other cards in its range in terms of aesthetics.

However, we were expecting it to at least be low-profile instead of a dual-slot setup. The card also measures 175mm in length, which is even overly compact for your mini ITX builds.

Connectivity on the other hand fills you in with 1 DVI-D and HDMI 2.0b. That’s about it really, but not as much limiting since this is, after all, a budget-oriented card and the odds that you’re looking for one like this would just mean you have two displays at most.

PERFORMANCE

Let’s not forget. The GT 1030 is by no means a gaming graphics card, nor would you want to push it to do so. Its purpose is to offer a fine upgrade if you’re jumping from an IGP, like an Intel HD 530 or older.

TEST SYSTEM SETUP
Motherboard	ECS Z270H4-I
CPU	Intel Core i5 6500
GPU	Inno3D GeForce GT 1030
RAM	ADATA 8GB DDR4 2133MHz
Storage	128 GB HyperX Fury SSD + Seagate BarraCuda 4TB + 2TB Western Digital Green HDD
PSU	Corsair VS450
Case	Deepcool Tesseract
OS	Windows 10 Pro N
Display	BenQ GW2270H

We’ll kick it off with a round of synthetic benchmarks that can measure a GPU’s performance, and then head on to a couple of game runs just so we can have a reference on how it fares when it’s stacked against an Intel HD 530.

Synthetic Benchmarks

3DMark Firestrike

3DMark comes with a wide range of synthetic benchmarks that lets its users test a device’s performance. Firestrike is a DirectX11 benchmark that includes tests with heavy tessellation, volumetric illumination, complex smoke simulation, dynamic particle illumination, and so forth.

Unigine Superposition

UNIGINE Superposition is a benchmark software running on the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It’s an extreme performance and stability test for PC hardware, with VR experience also thrown in the package.

UNIGINE Valley

UNIGINE Valley is another benchmark software from UNIGINE. It is powered by UNIGINE 1 Engine, and it has been a mainstay when it comes to testing our GPUs.

CINEBENCH

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software Cinema 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation.

In-Game Benchmarks

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is currently one of the most demanding games available today, making it a viable benchmark to use on our tests. We'll be recording our overall scores here to sum up the collective results.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is another open-world game by Monolith Productions. It features an in-game benchmark tool that will let us test our GPUs. So let’s go ahead.

Real World Performance

Crysis 3

Let's not forget - Crysis 3 still holds up to be one of the most demanding games to date. A meme was born and is still in use today, so let's take advantage of it while we're at it.

Overwatch

Overwatch is a staple in the modern FPS genre with its fast-paced action and colorful, artsy character designs. To keep the procedure standard, the method involves a run around Eichenwalde on Defense from start line to Attack area and back to stop at the 1:00 mark.

DOTA 2

Since DOTA 2 is still a thing, we’ll go ahead and use it for our benchmark test. To standardize the results, testing procedure is based on the match (23:45-24:45) of Team Secret and Team Liquid during Shanghai Major.

GPU Temperature

CONCLUSION

The GeForce GT 1030 isn’t a graphics solution that’s set to equip your PC with blasting firepower. Rather, it’s designed to offer better speeds than what an integrated graphics solution can provide. And in that sense, it easily delivers.

Needless to say, this isn’t a graphics card that we would want to recommend if you want to game. It's a 30-watt GPU. You're not going to play gmaes with it. Furthermore, it’s also absent with NVIDIA’s gaming features that you wouldn’t want to miss out on, and you’ll be hampering your gaming experience to a relative degree.

Now, if you’re on the market to build that ‘true’ home PC for your home theater needs or workhorse essentials, but without the lofty price tags associated with the Green Team’s GTX gaming cards, the COLORFUL GT 1030 easily presents itself as a well-rounded solution to fill you in.