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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630: A Budget Graphics Card for Basic Tasks and Modest Gaming

Analysis of Relevance in 2025

Introduction

In an era where games and applications demand more and more resources, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630 remains a rare example of an affordable GPU for undemanding users. Released in 2022 as a successor to the GTX 1050 Ti, this card stays relevant in 2025 due to its low price (around $130–150) and energy efficiency. But is it suitable for modern tasks? Let’s take a closer look.

Architecture and Key Features

Turing: No Frills

The GTX 1630 is built on the Turing architecture, but lacks the key innovations of higher-end models. The manufacturing process is 12 nm (TSMC), which feels outdated against the 5-nm chips from AMD and NVIDIA in 2025.

What It Can and Can't Do

- No RT Cores or Tensor Cores: Support for ray tracing (RTX) and DLSS is absent.

- Minimal Feature Set: The only standout features are adaptive shading and partial support for DirectX 12 Ultimate.

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR): Compatible with AMD’s FSR 3.0 technology, which helps increase FPS in supported games.

Conclusion: The architecture is oriented towards basic tasks, but not towards the future.

Memory: Modest Capabilities

Technical Specifications

- Memory Type: GDDR6.

- Memory Size: 4 GB.

- Bus Width: 64 bits (narrow "bottleneck").

- Bandwidth: 96 GB/s.

Impact on Performance

4 GB of memory in 2025 is a critical minimum. For example:

- In Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (low settings, 1080p), the video card will hit the VRAM limit, causing FPS drops and low-quality textures.

- For working in DaVinci Resolve or Blender, 4 GB will only suffice for simple projects.

Advice: Avoid games and applications with memory requirements exceeding 3.5 GB.

Gaming Performance: What to Expect in 2025?

Full HD (1080p) — Comfort Zone

- CS2: 90–110 FPS (max settings).

- Fortnite (without RT, FSR 3.0 on "Performance"): 50–60 FPS.

- Hogwarts Legacy (low settings, FSR 3.0): 35–45 FPS.

1440p and 4K — Not for GTX 1630

Even with FSR 3.0, the card will not provide smooth gameplay above 1080p. For example, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree at 1440p will deliver only 25–30 FPS.

Ray Tracing — Forget About It

Without hardware support for RT cores, enabling ray tracing turns games into slideshows (5–10 FPS).

Professional Tasks: On the Edge of Feasibility

Video Editing and Rendering

- Premiere Pro: Editing videos at 1080p is possible, but rendering with effects will take 2–3 times longer than with an RTX 3050.

- Blender: CUDA cores (512 units) can handle simple scenes, but for Cycles, it's better to use the CPU.

Scientific Calculations

The low-powered GPU is suitable only for educational projects in MATLAB or Python (e.g., data processing).

Conclusion: The GTX 1630 is a "workhorse" for the office but not for a professional studio.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP and Recommendations

- TDP: 75 W — powered through the PCIe slot, no additional cables needed.

- Cooling: Passive or single-slot coolers (e.g., the model from ASUS).

- Case: A case with 1–2 fans is sufficient. Avoid “hot” cases without ventilation.

Advice: Even in compact builds (Mini-ITX), overheating is unlikely.

Comparison with Competitors: Who's Better?

AMD Radeon RX 6400

- Price: $140.

- Pros: Support for FSR 3.1, slightly better performance in Vulkan games.

- Cons: Only 4 GB GDDR6, PCIe 4.0 x4 (loses up to 15% FPS on PCIe 3.0).

Intel Arc A380

- Price: $120.

- Pros: 6 GB GDDR6, support for XeSS.

- Cons: Poor driver optimization for older games.

Conclusion: The GTX 1630 only wins against competitors in driver stability and power consumption.

Practical Tips

Power Supply

- Recommendation: 350–400 W (e.g., EVGA 400 BR).

- Important: The card does not require a power cable — ideal for upgrading old PCs.

Compatibility

- Platforms: Works even on systems with 2010-era processors (e.g., Intel Core i5-3470).

- PCIe: Version 3.0 — no limitations.

Drivers

- Regularly update GeForce Experience: NVIDIA still releases patches for the GTX 16 series.

- In new games, "drops" may occur due to insufficient VRAM — lower texture settings.

Pros and Cons of the GTX 1630

Pros

- Price below $150.

- Energy efficiency (suitable for HTPCs).

- Quiet operation.

- Support for modern interfaces (HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4).

Cons

- 4 GB VRAM — insufficient for 2025 games.

- No ray tracing or DLSS.

- Weaker than competitors from AMD and Intel in terms of price/performance ratio.

Final Conclusion: Who Should Choose the GTX 1630?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Owners of office PCs wanting to run older games or indie projects.

2. Builders of compact systems (e.g., for streaming or document work).

3. Budget-constrained users who do not need ultra settings.

Alternative: If your budget is closer to $200, consider a used RTX 2060 or a new Intel Arc A580 — they will offer significantly more capabilities.

The GTX 1630 is not a gaming champion, but a humble worker whose strength lies in simplicity and accessibility. In 2025, it finds its niche, but requires a clear understanding of its limitations.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

June 2022

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1630

Generation

GeForce 16

Base Clock

1740MHz

Boost Clock

1785MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x8

Transistors

4,700 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

TSMC

Process Size

12 nm

Architecture

Turing

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

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

1500MHz

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.

96.00 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.

28.56 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.

57.12 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.

3.656 TFLOPS

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.

57.12 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.

1.791 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.

512

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

75W

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

7.5

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.7

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

250W

Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p

Score

6 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p

Score

18 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p

Score

29 fps

FP32 (float)

Score

1.791 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

2060

Blender

Score

289

Vulkan

Score

23688

OpenCL

Score

24934

Compared to Other GPU

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p / fps

GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER

47 +683.3%

Radeon RX 6600 XT

39 +550%

RTX A2000

26 +333.3%

GeForce GTX 970

15 +150%

GeForce GTX 1630

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p / fps

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

95 +427.8%

Radeon RX 5700 XT

75 +316.7%

RTX A2000 12 GB

54 +200%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

33 +83.3%

GeForce GTX 1630

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p / fps

GeForce RTX 3070

141 +386.2%

Arc A770

107 +269%

GeForce RTX 2060

79 +172.4%

Radeon RX 6500 XT

46 +58.6%

GeForce GTX 1630

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 6930

1.882 +5.1%

Quadro M2000

1.822 +1.7%

GeForce GTX 1630

1.791

GeForce MX450 25W

1.7 -5.1%

Radeon R7 360E

1.645 -8.2%

3DMark Time Spy

Arc A550M

5182 +151.6%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

3906 +89.6%

Radeon 780M

2755 +33.7%

GeForce GTX 1630

2060

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

623 -69.8%

Blender

GeForce RTX 2060

1506.77 +421.4%

Arc A550M

848 +193.4%

Quadro T1000 Mobile GDDR6

415 +43.6%

GeForce GTX 1630

289

GeForce GT 1030

45.58 -84.2%

Vulkan

Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

98446 +315.6%

Radeon RX 6700S

69708 +194.3%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

40716 +71.9%

GeForce GTX 1630

23688

GeForce 940M

5522 -76.7%

OpenCL

Radeon RX 6600M

64427 +158.4%

Radeon Pro 5500 XT

42238 +69.4%

GeForce GTX 1630

24934

Quadro K4200

12186 -51.1%

GeForce 940M

6073 -75.6%