Why it matters to you
This card should help Nvidia address the sub-$100 graphics card market that is currently dominated by AMD’s RX 560 and RX 550 cards.
Nvidia apparently isn’t done with new Pascal-based products, as the company has a GeForce GT 1030 card in the works to address AMD’s new Radeon RX 500 Series presence in the sub-$100 graphics card market. The GT 1030 will be based on Nvidia’s unannounced GP108 graphics chip, which in turn is based on Nvidia’s latest Pascal architecture used in its GeForce GTX 10 Series family of graphics cards.
The most recent update regarding reports of the unannounced GT 1030 card is that the actual GP108 chip surfaced in a photo revealing its GP108-300-A1 model number. Prior to that, the GT 1030 appeared in benchmarks of Ashes of the Singularity scoring 1,100 points using the Standard preset. The card is supposedly on par or better in performance than the GeForce GTX 750 Ti.
Here are the numbers that we know of so far:
Die size:
132mm2
Process node:
14nm FinFET (possibly)
CUDA cores:
512
Texture mapping units:
32
Render output units:
16
Memory bus:
64-bit
Memory amount:
2GB and 4GB GDDR5
Memory Speed:
7Gbps (possibly)
Memory bandwidth:
56GB per second (possibly)
Interface:
PCI Express 3.0 x4 (possibly)
Maximum power draw:
30 watts
As the chart shows, there is a lot of “possibly” going on here given that a chunk of these numbers is based on speculation. However, we cannot ignore the close comparison to AMD’s Radeon RX 550 card, which has the same number of cores, texture mapping units, render output units, and VRAM amounts. The big difference appears to be in the memory bus, with AMD’s solution using a 128-bit memory bus and Nvidia’s using a 64-bit version.
Of course, with a reduced memory bus, Nvidia is going after AMD on the power and price fronts. The GT 1030 will supposedly consume up to 30 watts of power and range between $60 and $70. Meanwhile, AMD’s Radeon RX 550 consumes up to 50 watts of power and has a base price of $80.
That said, the unannounced GT 1030 will likely target the esports arena, and not the high-end QHD PC gaming crowd. Typically, Nvidia reserves the “GT” prefix for its entry-level graphics cards (under $100) whereas the GTX prefix covers its mid-range and high-end lineup (more than $100).
We really have not seen a new GT model since the release of the GT 740 in May 2014. Costing $90 at the time, the card had 384 CUDA cores and a base clock speed of 933MHz. It also came packed with 1GB of GDDR5 memory controlled by a 128-bit interface capable of a bandwidth of 80GB per second. Nvidia did not even bother offering a GT model with its GeForce 800 and 900 families of cards.
Just for kicks, here is what PC gamers will have for sub-$150 options on the market when the GT 1030 hits the scene:
Nvidia
AMD
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
$140
Radeon RX 560
$100
GeForce GTX 1050
$100
Radeon RX 550
$80
GeForce GT 1030
~$65