NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 220: 40nm and DX10.1 for the Low-End
by Ryan Smith on October 12, 2009 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Temperature & Noise
At idle, the GT 220 is one cool card. We’re a bit surprised that it couldn’t beat the 5850 here given the tiny 7W idle power usage, but the 5850 has the advantage of getting to vent hot air out the rear of the card.
Meanwhile we see one of the few chinks in the armor of the Radeon HD 4670. It idles a good 9C higher.
Small cards make little heat. Even with the small cooler on the GT 220, it doesn’t pass 79C. This becomes all the more impressive when we look at the noise data. Meanwhile the 4670 hits 90C. It may be the faster card, but it pays for it here.
Here we run up against the practical noise floor of our testing rig. Nothing with a fan can get below 46dB.
With a fixed speed fan, the GT 220 makes the same amount of noise at idle and at load. This means it’s still running into our noise floor under load even though it’s an actively cooled card. It has all the makings of a good HTPC card, if only the price-to-performance ratio was a bit better.
As for the 4670, it comes in at #2 with 50.1dB under load, making it noisier than the GT 220 but quieter than any of our usual suspects on the high-end.
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Guspaz - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Errm, Valve's latest hardware survey shows that only 2.39% of gamers are using 2+ GPUs with SLI or Crossfire. ATI has a 27.26% marketshare.Of those who did buy multi-GPU solutions, some may be "hidden" (GTX295, the various X2 solutions), in which case it had no impact whatsoever (since it's presented as a single card). Some may have used it as an upgrade to an existing card, in which case SLI/Crossfire may not have driven their decision.
It's true that SLI (2.14%) has greatly outsold Crossfire (0.25%), but that's such a tiny market segment that it doesn't amount to much.
ATI has managed to hold on to a respectable market share. In fact, their 4800 series cards are more popular than every single nVidia series except for the 8800 series.
So, I think I've sufficiently proven that SLI wasn't a knockout blow... It was barely a tickle to the market at large.
Seramics - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
When Sli came out? Stop mentioning ancient news. Right now, Sli n Xfire r abt equally sucks. Heard of Hydra? Thats the cool stuff dude. And yeah nvidia is very innovative indeed, renaming old products to look new to deceive customers, shave half the spec of a products n keep the same name (9600gso), releasing crappy products n selling it overprice.... MAN! Thats really innovative dun u think?Souleet - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Are you ignorant or something, ATI fanboy. GT220 is a 40nm and 9600GSO is a 65nm. How can you say they just changed the name? I thought so...gx80050 - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Die painfully okay? Prefearbly by getting crushed to death in a
garbage compactor, by getting your face cut to ribbons with a
pocketknife, your head cracked open with a baseball bat, your stomach
sliced open and your entrails spilled out, and your eyeballs ripped
out of their sockets. Fucking bitch
I really hope that you get curb-stomped. It'd be hilarious to see you
begging for help, and then someone stomps on the back of your head,
leaving you to die in horrible, agonizing pain. Faggot
Shut the fuck up f aggot, before you get your face bashed in and cut
to ribbons, and your throat slit.
gx80050 - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Fuck off and die retardSeramics - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Let's face it. Nvidia is NOT competitive at every front at every single price point. From ultra low end to mid range to ultra high end, tell me, which price point is nvidia being competitive?Well, of cos I believe Fermi will be something different. I truly believe so. In fact, given that HD5870's slightly below par performance for its spec (very likely bcos memory bandwith limited), and Fermi being on a much larger die and higher transistor count, I EXPECT nVidia next gen Fermi to easily outperform HD5870. Just like how GTX285 outperform HD4890. But by how much? For almost 100 USD more for juz 5-10% improvements? I believe this will likely be the case with Fermi vs 5870. Surely its faster, but ur mayb paying 100% more to get 25% extra fps.
CONCLUSION: Even if Nvidia retake the top single GPU performance crown, they were never a winner in price to performance at ANY price point. They care about profits than they care about you.
Souleet - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
I agree what your conclusion. Definitely price point ATI has always been on the top of their game but NVIDIA innovations is what make the two apart. But who knows, maybe one day ATI/AMD comes out with CPU/GPU solution that will change the technology industry. That would be cool.formulav8 - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
NVidia brought out the FX5800 Ultra??
TRIDIVDU - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
My son plays GTA, FIFA, POP, Tomb Raider, NFS etc. in my P4, 3.06 GHz WinXP m/c with N 9400 GT (MSI) 1GB card without any problem in a 19inch LCD monitor. Now that I am planning to exchange the 4 year old m/c with a new i5 650, 3.2 GHz, Win7 m/c fitted with GT220 1 GB card, please tell me whether he will find the new machine a better one to play games with.Thatguy97 - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
nvidias mid range was shit back then