Nvidia has a new graphics card out, the GT 1030 — and unlike pricier options, it starts at just $69.99, or just one-tenth of the $699 price tag that the company’s monster GTX 1080 Ti commands. The news was first spotted by VentureBeat.
The goal of the GT 1030 is to provide a cheaper, less powerful graphics card for gamers looking to get into competitive play on a budget. As such, it offers relatively weak specs — 2GB of onboard memory, and a core clock speed of 1265 MHz (which can boost to 1518 MHz). But that’s enough to run a wide range of popular e-sport games — including Dota 2, Rocket League, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or League of Legends — perfectly well.
A cheaper, less powerful graphics card for e-sports
The GT 1030 isn’t the first cheap e-sports focused card either. As VentureBeat notes, the GT 1030 will directly compete with AMD’s $79.99 Radeon RX 550, which is a similarly priced and specced budget GPU designed for e-sport play.
While most gamers would obviously prefer to get their hands on the most powerful graphics cards they can, the reality is that unless you’re trying to run something like Battlefield 1 or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided at 4K, you can probably get away with something a little cheaper. Especially when it comes to e-sports titles, which tend to be less demanding when it comes to system resources.
The GT1030 is available now from a variety of PC part supplies, including Zotac, MSI, and Gigabyte, starting at $69.99.