GT 1030 impressions

[mackerel]

I ordered this as I wanted a low power GPU for custom build I've been planning since... forever. At 30W TDP this isn't going to stress anything, yet on paper the performance should be roughly in the ball park of the old GTX 750.

The specific card I got is an Asus: https://www.asus.com/us/Graphics-Cards/PH-GT1030-O2G/

This is a full height card. The backplate takes one slot, and only has DVI and DHMI on it. No DP for those that might care. The cooler itself takes two slots and includes a fan. As a low power card it doesn't need any extra power connectors.

In initial testing with Unigine Heaven temps went into the 40's and I can't hear the fan over my other systems. I also used that as reference to overclock, and found I could apply +200 core, and max out the ram slider. That took the ram to 2000, and the core to an indicated boost of 1706. I tried +250 core but that crashed. With OC temps touched 50C and I still can't hear the fan. I would note the power limit seems to be capped at 100%, and I can't relax it. Power is the main throttle for this card. It seems they really want to keep it at nominal power rating, which doesn't seem reported by the card. I wonder if anyone has done bios hacks on it already?

Firestrike came out at 3777 with my 5 GHz coffee lake i3 system. Not doing so well on the hwbot rankings there, wonder if other cards either have capability to relax power limit, or is the CPU contribution swinging it to those with higher thread counts?

 

[Woomack]

I have no idea what about 3D performance but I got EVGA low profile 1030 as it was the cheapest and low profile but also with passive cooling. Pretty nice card but I wasn't testing it at all. It runs hot without additional cooling or good airflow but even without any fans it's 100% stable under full load. I left it in F@H for couple of days and temps were about 90°C but was stable.

 

[Evilsizer]

might be lucky if it does that compared to a 570, i have a GT730 same number of cuda cores but older GPU arch.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gt-1030-2gb,5110.html
my take away is depending on your game and res, if lower its a bit behind the 750 since the 64bit memory width. not sure how but at higher resolutions in some games the 1030 comes out ahead. i wanted to get a GT1030 my self looking for a passive single slot. i cant seem to find one, so i might as well stick to the GT730. as it really only used for the on-gpu BD decoding, no gaming of any kind. while it would lose money for NV, it would be nice to get a lower core count video card that is single slot passive to just use for the video decoding engine.

 

[Woomack]

I doubt that anyone will release passive single slot version which won't overheat because even on dual slot heatsink it's getting really hot. I'm not playing games on this card, just needed something new for tests on motherboards without IGP.

 

[mackerel]

Can't help with card suggestions, but when it comes to passive, they still benefit greatly from any airflow if you can redirect some from elsewhere in the case. I remember a FX5200 I think it was from AGP era. Small heatsink, no fan. Burnt my finger handling it after running. Put a drop of water on it, it fizzled and boiled off. Can't be healthy.