Nvidia launches GTX 1630: Is it worth the price?

American tech company Nvidia just launched a new GPU for the low-end PC graphics card market: The GTX 1630. Priced at around $169.99, the GPU is aimed at replacing the GT 1030 that was released in 2018, and is meant to compete with AMD’s RX 6400 and RX 6500 XT.

But is it worth the price?

For starters, the new Nvidia GTX 1630 has only has 512 Nvidia GPU CUDA cores and 4GB GDDR6 video RAM with a memory bandwidth of 64-bit. For comparison, the Nvidia GTX 1650, a card that was released 3 years ago, has almost double the CUDA cores at 896 cores and double the memory bandwidth at 128-bit. It may be mentioned that the GTX 1630 has a higher base clock and boost clock speeds, however, the gaming performance is way behind the GTX 1650 and AMD’s Radeon RX 6400.

Compared to the GT 1030, the GTX 1630 looks like a promising upgrade. For instance, it has double the memory, increased memory speed and bandwidth, more CUDA cores and base/clock speeds. The card also supports newer Nvidia features like G-Sync and Ansel. However, the new Nvidia card is too expensive to be seen as an ideal upgrade from the GT 1030. The Nvidia GTX 1650 or AMD’s RX 6500 XT are better options if you want to upgrade from the GT 1030.

At this price range, you are better off buying an integrated-graphics CPU like the Ryzen 7 5700G than shelling that amount for a discrete graphics card like the GTX 1630.

The GTX 1630 will be offered by companies like Asus, Colorful, EVGA, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit, PNY, and Zotac.

The only way we can recommend the GTX 1630 is if Nvidia cuts down its price to around the 130 USD mark.