Please stop buying these "new" NVIDIA GPUs: They are e-waste
Arol Wright

NVIDIA
The GPU market includes GPUs of all shapes, sizes, and price points. The cheapest ones can range from pretty good to actual trash, though.

As it turns out, many NVIDIA GPUs that are basically e-waste at this point are still being sold. The GT 710, the GT 730, the GT 1010, and the GT 1030 are all still being sold on Amazon and other storefronts, and while there's an actual reason why they're still available, I feel like it's high time for these to be discontinued once and for all.

Why do these GPUs still exist?
If you're as confused as me, let me walk you through the reason why they're still around. Market persistence of these ultra-low-end cards is driven by specific, utilitarian necessities rather than gaming aspirations. These are for those who need a GPU not for playing games, but just for display output. There are many CPUs that lack integrated graphics, and unless you get a graphics card—even one as weak as these—the computer won't really work. In these scenarios, spending minimal capital just to "light up" a monitor becomes the primary objective.


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Furthermore, these cards persist because of legacy hardware support and multi-monitor requirements in corporate environments. Many older enterprise systems still in operation lack the UEFI BIOS support required by modern graphics architectures. A GT 710 or 730 often retains compatibility with older Legacy BIOS motherboards that would fail to boot with an RTX 40-series card. Additionally, in office settings where data entry or financial tracking requires three or four monitors, these cheap cards offer a cost-effective way to expand display outputs without requiring a power supply upgrade. They are also favored for their low profile and passive cooling designs, allowing them to fit into slim, proprietary chassis used by Dell, HP, or Lenovo workstations where airflow is minimal and space is restricted.

Why are they e-waste?

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Despite the fact that they have a legitimate reason to exist, I'd still label these existing cards as e-waste. Modern integrated graphics, which come "free" inside most consumer processors, have vastly outstripped the capabilities of these discrete cards. Standard Intel integrated graphics or an AMD Radeon integrated solution found in an APU delivers significantly better performance, efficiency, and driver stability than a GT 710 or GT 730. By purchasing one of these discrete cards today, you're effectively paying extra for hardware that is slower and less efficient than the silicon likely already present in their CPU.

From a feature-set perspective, these cards are fundamentally broken for modern media consumption, which is often the intended use case for budget builds. The older architectures found in the GT 710 and 730 (Kepler and Fermi) lack hardware decoding support for modern video codecs like HEVC (H.265) or VP9/AV1. This means that simply watching a high-resolution YouTube video or a high-bitrate stream forces the CPU to do all the heavy lifting, often resulting in stuttering playback and a sluggish operating system experience. Furthermore, driver support for the older variants has officially ended, leaving users with potential security vulnerabilities and incompatibility with newer versions of Windows. The GT 1030, while slightly more capable, often ships with DDR4 memory instead of GDDR5, a deceptive downgrade that cuts its already meager bandwidth in half.

The other problem is that even if you don't have an integrated GPU, there are still a lot of alternatives for graphics cards that are equally as cheap and are way more worth the money. The biggest example of this is the Intel Arc A310, which vastly outperforms all of these cards and supports modern features, and it's available at a comparable price.

When a piece of hardware is too weak to render modern web pages smoothly, lacks critical video decoding engines, and costs more than the raw materials are worth, it's just landfill material. Especially so if other better, newer options are available for a similar price point.

What alternatives are there for cheap, non-gaming PCs?

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The most viable path for most people probably lies in modern processors with integrated graphics. Both AMD and Intel make chips with integrated graphics, and they're increasingly common. Do your due research to make sure the CPU you're buying actually has integrated graphics. If you're not going to play games, it's going to fit the bill amazingly.

For those attempting to revive an older system where a CPU swap is not possible, or for those who strictly require a discrete card for additional monitor outputs, there are better options. As I said before, the Intel Arc A310 is much better than these cards, and it's available at a comparable price. If that's still too expensive for you, heck, even the used market offers vastly superior value. A second-hand generic OEM card, such as a Quadro K620 or an older Radeon R7 series card, can often be found for less than half the price of a new retail GT 710 and provides equal or better utility for basic display tasks. If slightly more power is needed, a used GTX 750 Ti or RX 550 costs roughly the same as a new GT 1030 but offers significantly higher bandwidth and better driver support.

Just please, please, stop buying these trash GPUs. They're going to end up in landfills, and even if you do stick with it, you're going to suffer a lot.