While the industry anxiously awaits Nvidia's latest RTX 5090 GPUs to hit shelves, Maxsun has unexpectedly revived the decade-old GT 730 per ITHome. The AIB has unveiled two new models on the Chinese e-commerce platform JD: the MS-GT730 PH 4G and MS-GT730 PH 2G, starting at just $45. This is the sort of relaunch you'd expect amid the infamous global chip shortage, but here we are.
The GT 730 isn't anything to write home about as the GPU is based on Nvidia's GK208 die fabricated using TSMC's 28nm process. The GT 730 comes in both Fermi and Kepler flavors, and at the time, the specifications of low-end GPUs varied significantly from model to model. The Kepler-based GT 730, in particular, was outfitted with DDR3 and GDDR5 memory, depending on the AIB.
ITHome reports that these new GPUs are rebadged Kepler MS-GT730 Hammer 4G and MS-GT730 Hammer 2G models. Regarding the specifications, Maxsun's new GT 730s employ the GK208 die (Kepler 2.0), featuring 384 CUDA cores and 4GB of DDR3 memory. The GPU's design is rather sleek, 18.6cm long, 11cm wide, and 3.5cm thick. With a small 50W TDP, dissipating heat shouldn't be a huge ordeal, so Maxsun chose a single-fan configuration.
The memory is clocked at 1,333 MHz, while the GPU core clock operates at 902 MHz. The GPU includes one VGA, one DVI, and one HDMI port for connectivity, which are rarely used in modern monitors. The 4GB model costs $50, while the 2GB version costs $45 at JD. Remember that this is the local pricing in China and could vary from region to region when you factor in shipping and taxes.
What's the use case for such a GPU? While even modern-day iGPUs (Integrated GPUs) offer superior performance, they aren't cheap so that budget-conscious businesses may find these low-end GPUs suitable for daily office tasks.
Still, we should address the elephant in the room: support. Nvidia ceased driver support for Kepler GPUs in 2021 and ended security updates last September, making these GPUs vulnerable to specific exploits. However, since this is now a 10-year-old GPU, you likely won't miss out on new features.
