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Gainward GeForce GTX 1630 Ghost Review - Challenging the AMD RX 6400

Name: Gainward GeForce GTX 1630 Ghost
Brand: Gainward
Price: 150 USD

W1zzard

on Jun 28th, 2022,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: Gainward

(144 Comments) »

Introduction

Today, we have for review the Gainward GeForce GTX 1630 Ghost. This card is a real "ghost" from the past, as it's the first GeForce GTX product we've reviewed in almost two years. The GTX 1630 is, surprisingly, a brand-new SKU being launched today. Based on the older "Turing" graphics architecture and positioned in the 16-series which lacks real-time ray tracing or DLSS support, the GTX 1630 is expected to become NVIDIA's new entry-level product.

The GTX 1630 is based on not just the older "Turing" architecture, but its silicon is also built on the older 12 nm FinFET node. Why NVIDIA decided to launch this now is really anyone's guess. Perhaps the company was sitting on a mountain of 12 nm TU117 chips bound for GeForce MX mobile SKUs and decided to rope in the desktop segment to consume some inventory, but we'll never know for sure. Based on its positioning, the GeForce GTX 1630 will compete with the AMD Radeon RX 6400 and Intel Arc A380.

The 12 nm TU117 silicon physically features 16 "Turing" SMs, or 1,024 CUDA cores, 64 TMUs, 16 ROPs, and a 128-bit wide memory interface. Even the GTX 1650 doesn't max this out, featuring just 896 CUDA cores. The new GeForce GTX 1630 in today's review has just half of the CUDA cores physically present on the silicon—512. That's not all as NVIDIA even halved the memory bus width to just 64-bit while keeping the memory amount the same at 4 GB. GPU clock speed is significantly higher than the GTX 1650, at 1785 MHz compared to 1665 MHz on the GTX 1650.

The Gainward GTX 1650 Ghost features a simple monoblock fan-heatsink with a pair of fans. Although the typical board power of the GTX 1630 is rated at 75 W, Gainward has given it a 6-pin PCIe power input to ensure the card stays far away from the PCIe slot electrical design limits. We haven't received any price information from Gainward or NVIDIA, but based on the rumors floating around, these cards are expected to sell for $150. I expect the Gainward GTX 1630 Ghost to sell at the baseline MSRP price point, too.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630 Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Cores	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
GT 1030	$80	384	16	1228 MHz	1468 MHz	1500 MHz	GP108	1800M	2 GB, GDDR5, 64-bit
GTX 1630	$150	512	16	1740 MHz	1785 MHz	1500 MHz	TU117	4700M	4 GB, GDDR6, 64-bit
GTX 1650	$170	896	32	1485 MHz	1665 MHz	2000 MHz	TU117	4700M	4 GB, GDDR5, 128-bit
RX 6400	$160	1024	32	2039 MHz	2321 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 24	5400M	4 GB, GDDR6, 64-bit
GTX 1650 Super	$200	1280	32	1530 MHz	1725 MHz	1500 MHz	TU116	6600M	4 GB, GDDR6, 128-bit
RX 5500 XT	$200	1408	32	1717 MHz	1845 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 14	6400M	4 GB, GDDR6, 128-bit
GTX 1660 Super	$210	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	1750 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5600 XT	$230	2304	64	1375 MHz	1560 MHz	1500 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 6500 XT	$175	1024	32	2685 MHz	2825 MHz	2248 MHz	Navi 24	5400M	4 GB, GDDR6, 64-bit
RTX 2060	$250	1920	48	1365 MHz	1680 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$350	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$380	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
RX 5700 XT	$320	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3050	$340	2560	32	1552 MHz	1777 MHz	1750 MHz	GA106	12000M	8 GB, GDDR6, 128-bit
RTX 2070	$300	2304	64	1410 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6600	$280	1792	64	2044 MHz	2491 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 23	11060M	8 GB, GDDR6, 128-bit
RTX 3060	$380	3584	48	1320 MHz	1777 MHz	1875 MHz	GA106	12000M	12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit

Packaging

The Card

Visually, the card looks identical to the Gainward GTX 1650 Ghost, which isn't surprising as the TU117 GPU used on both cards is the same, just with a different number of active units. Two semi-transparent fans are installed on a matte black heatsink frame with a metal heatsink underneath. A backplate is not available.

Dimensions of the card are 17 x 11.5 cm, and it weighs 405 g.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity includes two standard DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0b.

The card has one 6-pin power input. This configuration is rated for up to 150 W of power draw.

The GeForce GTX 1630 does not support SLI.

Teardown

Gainward's card design makes removing the cooler shroud from the card easy. As such, end-users could replace the fans themselves when they break.

The heatsink is a big slab of metal that's surprisingly heavy. There are no heatpipes or other advanced means of cooling, and none is required—temperatures are low and noise levels outstanding. As you can see from the thermal pads, the main heatsink not only cools the GPU chip, but also the memory chips and VRM circuitry.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.