Nvidia will release a GT 1030 graphics chip after all

Whether it is pressure from AMD, or just some revenue-mining tactic, it seems that Nvidia will indeed release a GT 1030 graphics card, the cheapest of the cheap in the Pascal family.

Chinese website Expreview has grabbed some pics that reveal Nvidia has indeed developed a GP108 iteration of its Pascal microarchitecture, aimed at the sub-$100 segment, a segment where AMD, just last week, announced its own product offers in the form of the Radeon RX 550 graphics card. The card is the GT 1030, and there are some interesting details on the matter.

The image leaks show a GP108-300-A1 die shot, a fairly tiny core which is reported to have just 132mm2, built on TSMC's 14nm process, with 32 TMUs and 16 ROPs, but an anemic 64-bit memory bus connected to 2GB or 4GB GDDR5. The card is further reported to draw just 30W from the PCIe bus, which means it will be devoid of any power connectors. It is also reported to be a strictly digital video card, with no analogue (VGA) output.

Performance on these cards will be nothing to phone home about, of course, and should grant you reasonable casual gaming experiences, on par with eSports titles.

As we mentioned above, the GT 1030 will address the sub-$100 segment which is currently populated by the recently released Radeon RX 550. Expreview says that May 17th is the launch date for the GT 1030.

KitGuru Says: Nvidia will leave no market segment unturned to face off with AMD. Going into this market, where margins are tiny and success is measured by your competitor's loss, is clearly a tactical move on Nvidia's side to match, or undercut, AMD's offers.

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