MSI GeForce GT 1030: A $70 Passively-Cooled Graphics Card, Decent With OpenGL/Vulkan/OpenCL/VDPAU

The GeForce GT 1030 is able to deliver nearly a 60 FPS average when running DiRT Rally on Linux at 1080p with medium image quality settings. The GeForce GT 1030 does much better than the GTX 650 Kepler graphics card as well as the Kabylake HD Graphics 630 of the i7-7700K.

Dota 2 with its OpenGL renderer is able to run at 1080p above a 60 FPS average and comes out well ahead of the GeForce GTX 650 Kepler as well as the vintage GeForce GTX 460 Fermi. Just a few years ago the GTX 460 was a decent graphics card.

But if looking at the performance-per-dollar, the GeForce GTX 1050 series delivers the best bargain followed by the GT 1030 and then AMD's Polaris offerings.

If looking at Dota 2's performance-per-Watt, the GeForce GT 1030 is right in line with AMD's Polaris cards and just ahead of the GTX 750 Ti.

Being passively-cooled, the MSI GeForce GT 1030 is one of the hotter cards.