Nvidia GTX 1630 Review ft. Palit

1. Introduction2. Palit GTX 1630 Dual3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. Cyberpunk 20776. Dying Light 27. F1 20218. Far Cry 69. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker10. God of War11. Grand Theft Auto V12. Hitman 313. Rainbow Six Siege14. Resident Evil Village15. Total War: Warhammer III16. The Witcher 317. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)18. Clock Speed19. GPU Temperatures20. Acoustics21. Power Draw: 1080p22. Performance per Watt: 1080p23. Total System Power Draw24. Overclocking25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

Almost three years on since its last release, Nvidia has brought back the GTX family for what is, perhaps, its final hurrah in the form of the GTX 1630. Being completely honest, if this is the last GTX-branded GPU we see from Nvidia, it is a very limp way for the series to go out after all these years.

Despite that, I don't actually think the GTX 1630 is a bad product. I say that as I am very much looking at this as a GT 1030 replacement – which is likely why it’s been named as the GTX 1630 in the first place. In that sense, I don't think it's terrible. It’s got enough gaming performance to play older or esports titles at low or medium settings, the three display outputs are OK (and a step up from the GT 1030) while we still get H.264 and H.265 encoding, even if the 1630 isn't using the 7^th Gen NVENC encoder.

Of course, it is clearly not a gaming powerhouse, coming in on average 14% slower than the GTX 1050 Ti and 36% slower than the GTX 1650. But for a small media PC or as an upgrade for a kid, it will get the job done.

That is, however, before we take pricing into account. Retail listings for the GTX 1630 are few and far between, but I did spot one Zotac model up for pre-order at £179.99. £180 for the GTX 1630.

Even by modern standards, that is absolutely ludicrous. This is more money than what the 1050 Ti launched for, almost 6 years ago, but the 1630 is the slower product. It just makes no sense to me – on what planet is Nvidia living on that this can hit the market at £180? In fact, to make matters worse, actual GTX 1650 models are in stock at the same price, and that is almost 60% faster on average for 1080p gaming.

After the other launches we have seen this year, specifically with the RX 6500 XT, it is hard for me to come to any other conclusion than that the low-end GPU market is just completely broken. The GTX 1630 is just another launch with just outrageous pricing that makes no sense to anyone.

I mean, I can understand why this product exists – Nvidia is likely sitting on a ton of TU117 GPUs, so they decided to make a cut-down model for the budget market. But this should be a £75 graphics card at most, not one costing £100 more than that.

In fairness to Palit, the Dual model we have reviewed today proved an impressive little card, with good temperatures and very low noise levels – it's just that the pricing strategy for the GTX 1630 which is outrageous to me. In 2022 it still makes more sense to buy a second-hand GTX 1060 for around £130 or less, or an RX 570 for around £110, than to get either of Nvidia or AMD's latest products in the sub-£200 market. For gamers, that is depressing and frankly unacceptable.

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Pros

• Very low power draw (but still required 6-pin).
• Updated video outputs compared to GT 1030.
• Palit Dual is highly compact but runs cool and quiet.

Cons

• Outrageous pricing for this level of performance.
• Slower than the GTX 1050 Ti from 2016 (while costing more).
• 6-pin power connector is unnecessary.
• 6th Gen NVENC, rather than 7th Gen.

KitGuru says: GTX 1630 priced at £180 is a kick in the teeth for budget gamers. And that's putting it politely.

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