![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , August 10, 2006
- Author:
- Casey Brewer
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
MSI NX7300 GS TD256E
Gaming for under $100 is possible with the latest video cards sporting DX9 features. We evaluate the MSI NX7300 GS TD256E and see how this value-end video card compares to the competition in the latest games.
Battlefield 2
(DirectX 9)
Battlefield 2, 3rd of the Battlefield games, is a near-future first person shooter. For our gameplay evaluation we found settings that would be playable not only with 16 players but with 64 in multiplayer. In light of wanting the best multiplayer experience we pushed for high framerates.
For the AA and AF settings, we will use the in-game options available. The current AF options allows for a “Low,” “Medium,” or “High” setting, which we will indicate as such on each graph.
The greatest impact to gameplay in this game is view distance. If you don't have view distance set to maximum, your enemy can see you before you see them. It is a must to have this at maximum with Battlefield 2.
Our manual-run through graphed gameplay evaluation will be an entire map on the “Sharqi Peninsula” single player mission at expert difficulty.
We found the playable resolution for both video cards in Battlefield 2 was 1024x768. We tried higher resolutions and they simply killed performance. The MSI GeForce NX7300 GS TD256E simply could not handle 2x anti-aliasing at 1024x768. It suffered a huge penalty doing so and really was only playable at 800x600 if you wanted 2X AA. The ATI Radeon X1300 PRO on the other hand did not suffer a large hit with 2X AA and allowed this setting at 1024x768 with playable performance.
Your environment in Battlefield 2 really makes the experience. If you have a low quality world, you lose immersion. Terrain quality effects how precise the world is at a distance. It is common to notice the terrain changing as you get closer to it. While this will happen even at the highest of settings, the farther away it changes from your view, the less distracting it is. Both video cards were playable at medium terrain and filtering quality.
There were some differences though that do impact the experience. With the MSI NX7300 GS we were able to have higher effects settings, higher geometry settings and low dynamic shadows. Medium effects provided more particles visible from the particle system while a higher geometry setting allowed less square models, they simply had more form to them. Low dynamic shadows provided some rudimentary shadows being cast from objects and characters. Both video cards were playable with Low Dynamic Lights, Medium Textures, and Medium Lighting however.
Image Quality
All screenshots are in portable network graphics (PNG) format so JPEG compression won’t interfere with image quality. File sizes range from 1MB-2MB below.
From the screenshots above you can compare the image quality between the two video cards at the playable levels we found. Anti-Aliasing makes a huge impact on image quality at 1024x768. The difference is noticed most while moving in game, it can be a bit hard to see in these still screenshot comparisons. We did run into some issues with the MSI NX7300 GS TD256E in Battlefield 2 below.
Game Issues
At some points in the game, we experienced what you can see above. This one issue sprang up when starting a level, or if we alt-tabbed in and out we were greeted with this. It did not happen all the time or on every map, and as soon as we spawned we did not run into this issue again unless it showed before spawning on the next map. We lean toward this being a driver issue with the GPU rather than a hardware problem with the MSI video card.