As the rumor-mill surrounding the inevitable announcement ofNvidia’s RTX 4000 series of graphics cards ramps up, it’s all too easy to forget that the lowest end of the GPU spectrum has been mostly underserved for a long time now. Even the GT 1030 is now 5 years old, and it is mostly outperformed by the modern integrated CPU solutions for graphics processing.
To that end, rumors suggest thatNvidiamight be working on a new affordable low-end GPU: the GTX 1630. According to Videocardz, this could very well be Nvidia’s next dedicated low-spec graphics processor, and it’s supposed to be roughly comparable to the GTX 1050Ti in regard to performance, which would be a substantial upgrade compared to the currently available GT 1030.
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WhileNvidia could launch its RTX 4000 GPU lineupover the next couple of months, Videocardz' sources suggest that the GTX 1630 might also be coming out sometime in the near future. This GPU would likely draw less than 75W of power and come with an updated set of GDDR6 memory, though it’s bound to be specced lower than the likes of GTX 1650. Naturally, it would also have to be cheaper than GTX 1650, which launched with an MSRP of $149 and is currently priced at about $190.
BothNvidia and AMD GPU prices are fallingas of late, though it’s clear that a GPU such as the RTX 3070 won’t be interesting to low-end users even at MSRP. Up until now, the only real options for HTPC and workstation builders looking for a cheap, low-profile graphics card were aging chips with questionable feature support, and it would make sense for Nvidia to be working on a more up-to-date GPU for future release.
It goes without saying that power draw, too, is a major consideration. While unconfirmed, somerumors claim that RTX 4090 could draw 450Wof power, which would make Nvidia’s new high-end cards a bad choice for PCs that don’t have the kind of room and airflow that would be necessary to keep them properly powered and cooled. Something along the lines of the rumored GTX 1630 would, then, be a way better option for non-gaming uses.
On the AMD side of things, the purported GTX 1630 would effectively compete withthe new Radeon RX 6400, which has an MSRP of $160 and would likely be roughly comparable in regard to performance. These particular rumors are, then, reasonably believable. Though, of course, it remains to be seen if and when Nvidia pushes out its next low-spec GPU.
