With its 450MHz core clock and 256MB of 333MHz memory, we saw unplayable frame rates even at 1024 x 768 in both test games — 15fps in Call of Duty 2 and 13fps in Far Cry — and it isn’t exactly overflowing with features either. This is not a card for gamers.

But professional media centre builders are seeing the sense in the 7300 LE. It’s the cheapest card available that offers hardware-accelerated, high-definition video playback using NVIDIA’s PureVideo technology, so it will be ideal in a compact, modestly-powered Windows Media Center PC. It’s a half-height card too, so if you can find a suitable backplate it will fit in a low-profile chassis, although you’ll forfeit the D-SUB output. MSI’s version offers single-link DVI and D-SUB interfaces as well as TV-out for hooking up other displays via the supplied S-Video cable. Its bundled suite of apps isn’t very useful, but the fan is quiet and there’s dual-monitor support.

This MSI card isn’t the best example of the GeForce 7300 LE, as it doesn’t have a component adapter and isn’t passively cooled; a card such as the Albatron (see below) would be a better choice for a media centre.