Review on 🎮 Asus GeForce GT 1030 2GB PH-GT1030-O2G Phoenix Fan OC Edition Graphics Card with HDMI and DVI by Rebecca Johnson

This test is for the ASUS GT1030-2G-CSM, an entry-level gaming or graphics card with decent performance. I bought this card to replace an 11 year old (then) high end GTX 260 card that came new with my Ubuntu 20.04 Personal workstation which ran pretty well with NVidia's proprietary Legacy X11 driver , until the kernel was updated to version 5.8. The latest kernels do not support the driver for the GTX 260. This left me with an unaccelerated, open-source nouveau driver that rendered correctly but performed poorly: browsers became unresponsive and games were very slow due to heavy software rendering on the hardware. 8 fps in one of my 3D games, too jerky to use. What a difference 11 years. Compared to the outdated GTX 260, this entry-level board has similar specs, but some operations are much faster. Even though my old PCIe 2.0 motherboard runs at half the transfer rate of the PCIe 3.0 board interface, everything is fast including first-person games (at 24-45 fps) and I'm using the latest 470 driver. Not bad at all.* CSM stands for Corporate Stable Model, "Extended Longevity & Advance Swap Service" is written on the box.* The card has a large finned heatsink instead of a fan and shroud, making it silent. This is a full height card.* It is low profile and comes with bezel brackets for both low and regular slots.* It is double slot wide and the cooling fins occupy the adjacent slot.*It comes without a metal cover for an open panel -Slot aligned with the cooling fins. So you'll need to find one to cover the hole when replacing a card that covers both slots on the back. * There are two display output ports: DVI-D and HDMI. *HDMI also has an audio device on the card which I have not tested. * Slow, unaccelerated, open-source nouveau linux driver works out of the box. * The fast accelerated proprietary NVidia 470 X11 driver also works well. * Cards based on the NVidia GT 1030 chipset debuted at around $75, but the current price is about twice that due to missing parts; I still think the price is fair.* The NVidia GT 1030 chip requires around 30 watts of power. This card is powered from a PCIe slot and does not require a 6-pin connector, so it draws less than 75W overall.