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.

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.
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.
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 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.

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