With most of the fuss revolving around video cards such as Nvidia's 7900 series and ATI's X1900 series these days, it's easy to overlook entry-level offerings like the GeForce 7300. That is unless you don't have a ton of coin to throw down for a high end card. As great as it is using high resolutions with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on a 20" LCD is, it's simply not an affordable option for most of us. Of course, you could always settle for on-board video and save some money, right? Well, if you plan on playing any games or watching HD videos without dropping frames, probably not. So what do you do? What can you do if you don't have enough cash for a graphics powerhouse, but can't stand to deal with the limitations of most integrated video solutions?
Nvidia aims to help out the multitude of people stuck in that exact situation. With their previous GPU architecture, Nvidia introduced TurboCache technology, at first with their GeForce 6200 card. TurboCache allocates system memory to the video card by way of the PCI Express interface, and while it's certainly not as desirable as having copious amounts of high-speed on-board RAM, it is a useful way of adding more effective total frame buffer memory to an entry-level card, while also keeping prices down.
Today we're going to look at MSI's GeForce NX7300GS TD256E which features TurboCache technology. While the NX7300GS TD256E may not sport the same number of pixel shader processors or vertex shaders as a 7900 series product, it does have essentially the same feature set, including support for Shader Model 3.0 and PureVideo. Take a look...
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MSI GeForce NX7300GS
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Exploring GeForce 7 Series Technology
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NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 Shading Architecture
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Vertex Shaders
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Support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shader 3.0
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Displacement mapping
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Geometry instancing
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Infinite length vertex programs
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Pixel Shaders
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Support for DirectX 9.0 Pixel Shader 3.0
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Full pixel branching support
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Support for Multiple Render Targets (MRTs)
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Infinite length pixel programs
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Next-Generation Texture Engine
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Accelerated texture access
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Up to 16 textures per rendering pass
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Support for 16-bit floating point format and 32-bit floating point format
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Support for non-power of two textures
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Support for sRGB texture format for gamma textures
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DirectX and S3TC texture compression
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Full 128-bit studio-quality floating point precision through the entire rendering pipeline with native hardware support for 32bpp, 64bpp, and 128bpp rendering modes
API Support
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Complete DirectX support, including the latest version of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0
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Full OpenGL support, including OpenGL 2.0
64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending
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Full floating point support throughout entire pipeline
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Floating point filtering improves the quality of images in motion
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Floating point texturing drives new levels of clarity and image detail
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Floating point frame buffer blending gives detail to special effects like motion blur and explosions
NVIDIA Intellisample 4.0 Technology
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Advanced 16x anisotropic filtering (with up to 128 Taps)
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Blistering- fast antialiasing and compression performance
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Gamma-adjusted rotated-grid antialiasing removes jagged edges for incredible image quality
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Transparent multisampling and transparent supersampling modes boost antialiasing quality to new levels
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Support for normal map compression
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Support for advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and z-data at even higher resolutions and frame rates
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Fast z-clear
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NVIDIA UltraShadow II Technology
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Designed to enhance the performance of shadow-intensive games
NVIDIA Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) 3.0 Technology
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DVC color controls
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DVC image sharpening controls
NVIDIA PureVideo Technology
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Adaptable programmable video processor
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High-definition MPEG-2 and WMV9 hardware acceleration
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Spatial-temporal de-interlacing
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Inverse 2:2 and 3:2 pull-down (Inverse Telecine)
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4-tap horizontal, 5-tap vertical scaling
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Overlay color temperature correction
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Microsoft Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) supports multiple video windows with full video quality and features in each window
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Integrated HDTV output
Composited Desktop Hardware Engine
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Video post-processing
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Real-time desktop compositing
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Accelerated antialiased text rendering
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Pixel shader-driven special effects and animation
Advanced Display Functionality
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Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz
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Dual DVO ports for interfacing to external TMDS transmitters and external TV encoders
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Full NVIDIA nView multi-display technology capability
Operating Systems
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Windows XP/XP 64/ME/2000
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Linux
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Macintosh OS X
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