Great card for great price and very good performance
Pros: Cheap, good for beginners just upgrading from integrated graphics, plays many games on high, has CUDA for faster video encoding, PhysX enabled
Cons: None! (if you want to count DDR3 as a con, you really can't because this card isn't for hardcore gaming anyways!)
I honestly have nothing bad to say about this card! It has just about everything; CUDA, 3D-Vision, DirectCompute, PhysX, and OpenCL. $70 is an awesome price, made better by a $10 rebate!
Being that this card is under $100, you really can't call it a "hardcore" gaming card, BUT I have played 1080p videos on YouTube using this card, and my CPU goes up to only 16% (I have a dual core 2.2GHz) and with NO LAG WHATSOEVER! When I didn't have this card and I used to use integrated graphics, I couldn't even watch 720p videos without my CPU sounding like a jet engine!
This card is meant for home theater pcs because it has video acceleration and blu-ray acceleration; with CUDA, it is also made possible to encode videos 33% to 40% faster (my card does). If you have a 3D TV or monitor, this card has 3D Vision so you can play movies and games in 3D.
As for games, you definitely cannot play Crysis 2 on all high settings. I HAVE, however, played Portal 2, Burnout Paradise, GTA San Andreas, Dead Space 2, Halo2, and Halo Custom Edition, all maxed out with 1440x900, 2x AA or 3x AA, and high details! You CAN play Crysis 2 on this card (don't listen to all those morons out there who don't know what they are talking about); you can play, AS LONG AS you put the resolution to 800x600, and gamer settings, and custom settings on NVidia Control Panel.
As far as the overclockability of this card, it's pretty darn good!
Stock speeds are 700MHz core, 1400MHz shaders, and 700MHz memory; you can easily overclock this card to 825MHz core, 1650MHz shaders, and 825MHz memory WITHOUT any voltage increases and still be STABLE (I ran MSI Kombustor on it for 30 minutes straight and the max temp was 82 degrees Celsius).
If you are thinking about upgrading your graphics card in the future, keep this card also! You can dedicate this card to PhysX only and make your games look freaking sexy!
Note: I think it's not a con, but this card isn't SLI capable =(
Here is my overclocked card:
Being that this card is under $100, you really can't call it a "hardcore" gaming card, BUT I have played 1080p videos on YouTube using this card, and my CPU goes up to only 16% (I have a dual core 2.2GHz) and with NO LAG WHATSOEVER! When I didn't have this card and I used to use integrated graphics, I couldn't even watch 720p videos without my CPU sounding like a jet engine!
This card is meant for home theater pcs because it has video acceleration and blu-ray acceleration; with CUDA, it is also made possible to encode videos 33% to 40% faster (my card does). If you have a 3D TV or monitor, this card has 3D Vision so you can play movies and games in 3D.
As for games, you definitely cannot play Crysis 2 on all high settings. I HAVE, however, played Portal 2, Burnout Paradise, GTA San Andreas, Dead Space 2, Halo2, and Halo Custom Edition, all maxed out with 1440x900, 2x AA or 3x AA, and high details! You CAN play Crysis 2 on this card (don't listen to all those morons out there who don't know what they are talking about); you can play, AS LONG AS you put the resolution to 800x600, and gamer settings, and custom settings on NVidia Control Panel.
As far as the overclockability of this card, it's pretty darn good!
Stock speeds are 700MHz core, 1400MHz shaders, and 700MHz memory; you can easily overclock this card to 825MHz core, 1650MHz shaders, and 825MHz memory WITHOUT any voltage increases and still be STABLE (I ran MSI Kombustor on it for 30 minutes straight and the max temp was 82 degrees Celsius).
If you are thinking about upgrading your graphics card in the future, keep this card also! You can dedicate this card to PhysX only and make your games look freaking sexy!
Note: I think it's not a con, but this card isn't SLI capable =(
Here is my overclocked card:
