I Tried Gaming With Cash Register Parts

This video takes a look at the Nvidia NVS 315, a low‑power commercial graphics card often used in cash registers and business signage, to see how it performs in real gaming benchmarks. It also tests how far the card can be pushed with overclocking and compares the results across several older and newer titles:

This graphics card was never meant to be gamed with. This card is an Nvidia NVS 315, a low power, low profile commercial graphics card meant to display dual screens for things like signage and status displays in a business environment. So let’s try testing some games with it anyway, and while we’re here, let’s try to overclock it.

When I say testing some games, I’m not talking Willy the Worm. I mean something with heavier graphical requirements, like maybe Star Citizen. Well, perhaps that’s a bit much to ask for a graphics card that was pulled out of a cash register.

So let’s take a look at this card’s stats really quick to see exactly what we’re dealing with. The NVS 315 uses the GF119 GPU based on Fermi 2.0 architecture with a core clock of 523 MHz and a memory clock of 875 MHz. It’s got 48 CUDA cores, 1 GB of VRAM, and supports DirectX feature set 11. This puts its stats just above its little sibling, the NVS 310, but below the closest GeForce equivalents: the GeForce 510, 605, and 610.

So that means Star Citizen is a no‑go. Also a no‑go: one of my favorite benchmarks, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The same goes for the latest version of 3DMark. So it looks like we’re going to have to step it down a notch on these tests and start picking things a little bit older.

We managed to successfully test with five different gaming benchmarks and attempted to get each of their settings as close to playable as possible. After that, we’re going to try to overclock the card and see what the stats look like. Just be warned: 720p gaming on this card is not guaranteed.

First up was 3DMark 06. I was planning on using 3DMark 11, but just like the new version of 3DMark, it immediately crashed on launch and I wasn’t able to get it to run. 3DMark 06, however, ran with no problems at 720p with default settings. The NVS 315 was able to complete the tests and achieve a score of 4258.

Next up was Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. Being released at the beginning of 2007 and known to be highly optimized for Nvidia hardware, I had high hopes for this test. At 720p and low settings, this card was able to achieve playable average frame rates between 35.9 and 53.3 depending on the area of the game. Not bad. Let’s see how well this card holds up as we start getting into some more modern titles.

Next up we have Hard Reset, the cyberpunk FPS released in 2011. Running through the game benchmark, the card definitely started to show problems with 720p. It achieved an average frame rate of only 20.6 on the low quality preset. Reducing the resolution to 1024×768 only improved things slightly, now achieving an average frame rate of 23.7. Still not really what I would consider playable. Perhaps if we can get a decent overclock on this card, things will improve.

Next we have Resident Evil 6. The third person survival shooter was released for Windows in early 2013. This poor card had a lot of trouble handling this benchmark. At 720p on low settings, the card could only achieve a completely unplayable score of 1106, which is ranked D. Reducing the resolution all the way down to 640×480 pushed the score up to 2130, which is rank C, but I would still consider that pretty terrible.

Now for our fifth test, to try to find something newer that may actually play on this card, we have Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker. Endwalker is the fourth expansion to Final Fantasy XIV and was released in late 2021. At 720p and the Standard Settings preset, the test came in with a score of 1793, or Low ranking. Frankly, I’m a little impressed that it did that well.

Let’s see if we can get an overclock boost out of this card to increase its score. Pulling up MSI Afterburner, our base core and memory clocks are 523 and 875 MHz. Voltage control is disabled, even after unlocking it in Afterburner properties, but that isn’t surprising.

After a couple hours of testing and tweaking, this card was able to reach a core clock of 680 MHz, an increase of 30 percent. Its memory clock was increased to 960 MHz, an increase of nearly 10 percent. That was pretty impressive, but let’s see how it affected the benchmarks.

3DMark 06 went from a score of 4258 base to an overclock score of 5236. That’s a 23 percent increase, so it’s looking good so far.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition went from frame rates of 35.9 and 53.3 to overclock frame rates of 43.4 and 63.3. These are increases of 21 percent and 19 percent. This took what was already a fairly playable experience and turned it into something much more solid.

Hard Reset went from an average frame rate of 23.7 up to an overclock frame rate of 30.2. This is an increase of over 27 percent. This would certainly be a noticeable difference when attempting to play this game.

Resident Evil 6 went from a score of 2130 (rank C) up to an overclock score of 2552 (rank C). This is an increase of nearly 20 percent, though it still isn’t enough to make this game playable on this card.

For Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, the base score was 1793 (Low), which increased to an overclock score of 2416 (Slightly Low). This is an increase of nearly 35 percent, a very impressive improvement for the overclock.

So there you have it: the gaming progress of the mighty Nvidia NVS 315. Now my question to you is, have you ever tried gaming on a card like this? Perhaps an 05 series card or an older Quadro card? If so, please feel free to leave a comment on the video!

https://www.playdosgames.com/play/willy-the-worm/
https://www.msi.com/Landing/afterburner/graphics-cards