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NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030

NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 in 2025: A Budget GPU for Undemanding Tasks

Overview of capabilities, performance, and practical value of the graphics card

Architecture and Key Features

The NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030, released in 2017, is based on the Pascal architecture. Despite its age, this model is still available as a budget solution. The card is manufactured using a 14nm process, which ensures modest power consumption. However, it lacks support for modern technologies such as RTX ray tracing or DLSS—features that appeared in later Turing and Ampere architectures. AMD's FidelityFX is also not supported, making the GT 1030 suitable exclusively for basic tasks.

The key feature of the GT 1030 is its minimalism. It is equipped with 384 CUDA cores, which is sufficient for office applications and simple graphics tasks. It is an ideal choice for those who do not need high performance but value silence and compactness.

Memory: Modest Specifications

The GT 1030 uses 2GB of GDDR5 memory (though some early versions use DDR4, which is best avoided). Its memory bus is 64-bit, with a bandwidth of 48 GB/s. In comparison, even budget modern GPUs in 2025 offer a 128-bit bus and 6-8 GB of GDDR6.

The amount of memory is sufficient for working at 1080p resolution, but it falls short for games with high texture demands (such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield). The card is suitable for running older titles or indie games, where 2GB is not a critical limitation.

Gaming Performance: Realistic Expectations

The GT 1030 is a GPU for light tasks. In 2025, its gaming capabilities look like this:

- CS:GO / Dota 2: 60-80 FPS at medium settings in 1080p.

- Fortnite: 30-40 FPS at low presets.

- The Witcher 3: 25-30 FPS at minimum settings.

- Modern AAA titles (e.g., GTA VI): playable only at 720p with low settings, often achieving less than 20-25 FPS.

4K or 1440p support is virtually nonexistent—the card is aimed at 1080p. Ray tracing is unavailable due to the lack of RT cores.

Professional Tasks: Limited Applicability

For video editing in 1080p, the GT 1030 can handle basic projects in DaVinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere, but rendering will take a significant amount of time. In 3D modeling (Blender, AutoCAD), the card is only suitable for learning or working with simple scenes, thanks to CUDA support.

Scientific calculations based on CUDA/OpenCL are possible, but the low power of the cores makes it unsuitable for complex simulations. In this segment, it's better to look at cards with a higher core count, like the GTX 1650 or RTX 3050.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

The TDP of the GT 1030 is 30W, which allows it to operate without additional power—just the PCIe slot is sufficient. The card comes in two variants:

- Passive cooling (no fan)—suitable for mini-PCs and HTPCs.

- Active cooling—a single-fan system that is nearly silent under load.

Recommendations for cases: even compact models with a single case fan will provide adequate airflow. Avoid fully enclosed cases without ventilation.

Comparison with Competitors

In 2025, the GT 1030 competes with:

- AMD Radeon RX 550 (4GB): similar price ($60-70), but slightly better performance in DirectX 12.

- Intel Arc A380 (6GB): more expensive ($100-120), but supports AV1 and modern APIs.

- NVIDIA GTX 1650 (4GB): priced at $130-150, but is 2-3 times more powerful.

The GT 1030 only wins in terms of price (new models are $50-70) and energy efficiency. For gaming, the RX 550 or a used GTX 1050 Ti would be preferred.

Practical Tips

- Power Supply: A 300W unit is sufficient (even for builds with Core i3/Ryzen 3 level processors).

- Compatibility: PCIe 3.0 x4. Supported by Windows 10/11 and Linux, but drivers may not be updated after 2025.

- Drivers: Use Studio drivers for professional application work.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($50-70).

- Minimal power consumption.

- Quiet operation (especially the passive versions).

Cons:

- Weak performance in modern games.

- Only 2GB of memory.

- No support for DLSS, RTX, or other modern technologies.

Final Conclusion: Who is the GT 1030 For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Office PCs and HTPCs: quiet operation, 4K video support via HDMI 2.0.

2. Budget Gaming Systems: suitable for indie games or projects from the 2010s.

3. Backup GPU: if the main card has failed and the budget is tight.

In 2025, the GT 1030 appears outdated, but its low price and availability keep it relevant. For any serious tasks, it's better to pay an additional $30-50 for more modern models.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

May 2017

Model Name

GeForce GT 1030

Generation

GeForce 10

Base Clock

1228MHz

Boost Clock

1468MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x4

Transistors

1,800 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

Samsung

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

Pascal

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

64bit

Memory Clock

1502MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

48.06 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

23.49 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

35.23 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

17.62 GFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

35.23 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.104 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

384

L1 Cache

48 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

30W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

6.1

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

200W

Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p

Score

1 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p

Score

7 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p

Score

12 fps

Battlefield 5 2160p

Score

1 fps

Battlefield 5 1440p

Score

17 fps

Battlefield 5 1080p

Score

22 fps

FP32 (float)

Score

1.104 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

1105

Blender

Score

45.58

Vulkan

Score

9614

OpenCL

Score

10025

Hashcat

Score

53248 H/s

Compared to Other GPU

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p / fps

GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER

47 +4600%

Radeon RX 6600 XT

39 +3800%

RTX A2000

26 +2500%

GeForce GTX 970

15 +1400%

GeForce GT 1030

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p / fps

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

95 +1257.1%

Radeon RX 5700 XT

75 +971.4%

RTX A2000 12 GB

54 +671.4%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

33 +371.4%

GeForce GT 1030

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p / fps

GeForce RTX 3070

141 +1075%

Arc A770

107 +791.7%

GeForce RTX 2060

79 +558.3%

Radeon RX 6500 XT

46 +283.3%

GeForce GT 1030

Battlefield 5 2160p / fps

GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile

56 +5500%

Radeon RX 5600 XT

46 +4500%

Radeon RX 5500 XT

34 +3300%

GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB

24 +2300%

GeForce GT 1030

Battlefield 5 1440p / fps

Radeon RX 6600

100 +488.2%

Radeon RX Vega 56

91 +435.3%

GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB

66 +288.2%

GeForce GTX 1650 GDDR6

49 +188.2%

GeForce GT 1030

Battlefield 5 1080p / fps

Radeon RX 5700 XT

139 +531.8%

Radeon RX 5600 XT

122 +454.5%

Radeon RX 5500 XT

90 +309.1%

GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB

68 +209.1%

GeForce GT 1030

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon R7 350 640SP

1.16 +5.1%

Mobility Radeon HD 5870

1.142 +3.4%

GeForce GT 1030

1.104

T400 4 GB

1.072 -2.9%

GeForce GTX 760A

1.029 -6.8%

3DMark Time Spy

Arc A550M

5182 +369%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

3906 +253.5%

Radeon 780M

2755 +149.3%

GeForce GTX 1050

1769 +60.1%

GeForce GT 1030

1105

Blender

GeForce RTX 2060

1506.77 +3205.8%

Arc A550M

848 +1760.5%

Quadro T1000 Mobile GDDR6

415 +810.5%

GeForce GTX 880M

194 +325.6%

GeForce GT 1030

45.58

Vulkan

Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

98446 +924%

Radeon RX 6700S

69708 +625.1%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

40716 +323.5%

P106 090

18660 +94.1%

GeForce GT 1030

9614

OpenCL

Radeon RX 6700S

62821 +526.6%

Radeon Pro 5300

38843 +287.5%

Radeon R9 M290X

21442 +113.9%

Radeon Pro 455

11291 +12.6%

GeForce GT 1030

10025

Hashcat / H/s

GeForce GTX 660 Ti

55260 +3.8%

GeForce GTX 670

55110 +3.5%

GeForce GT 1030

53248

GeForce GTX 850M

52572 -1.3%

GeForce GTX 750

49571 -6.9%