NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 240: The Card That Doesn't Matter
by Ryan Smith on January 6, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Crysis: Warhead
Kicking things off, we’ll start with Crysis: Warhead. Warhead is still the single most demanding game in our arsenal, with even high-end cards continuing to struggle to put out a playable frame rate with everything turned up.
For testing these lower-end cards, we have deviated some from our normal testing. These tests were done with Mainstream graphics quality at resolutions more appropriate for these cards.
Crysis turned out to be one of our more interesting tests when it comes to differentiating the DDR3 and GDDR5 GT 240s. It’s sensitive to both memory speeds and memory sizes. In fact it’s the first test where we’ve ever explicitly encountered a problem on a 512MB card; at 1680 out Frost benchmark would crash (faulting the driver) about 2/3rds of the way through. Only after disabling Aero on Windows 7 would it run to completion.
Looking at the numbers, you’ll see that this is one of what will be many games where the 1GB DDR3 GT 240 falls behind. At 1680 (an admittedly unplayable resolution) the GDDR5 cards are 25% ahead, while even at a much more playable 1280 they’re ahead by 20%.
Compared to NVIDIA’s other cards, the GDDR5 GT 240s are a good 50% faster than the GT 220. However they fall well behind the 8800 GT, and even the 9600 GT squeezes ahead (a card that has less of everything except ROPs). Based on this and our overclocking data from later, we strongly suspect that Crysis is ROP-limited.
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cweinheimer - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
The review of the Asus 240 ddr5 card leads me to believe it could be a great HTPC card for HD content and some casual gaming. Does it support multichannel audio well enough?AznBoi36 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
AFAIK Nvidia cards doesn't pass audio over HDMI without a SPDIF pass-through, and as far as I can tell the GT240/220 doesn't have it.MadMan007 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
I might be fuzzy on remembering this but I could swear that some of the 'newer' NV cards (maybe the GT 210 and 220 which are similar to this card) can pass audio over the PCIe connection. So they still need an external sound source but not a connection.MadMan007 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Ah yes here we go: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3657...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3657... They support LPCM and lossy digital passthrough but not lossless digital passthrough. I assume that this GPU does as well.uibo - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Another rebadge? Nothing new here...klatscho - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
done already -> GTS260M/GTS360M;see here: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/01/03/nvidia-mobi...">http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/01/03/nvidia-mobi...
wh3resmycar - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
goodness gracious, a 4730 eats this card alive, for breakfast, lunch, dinner etc.Leyawiin - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
An HD 4730 can't beat anything if you can't find one for sale. I dare you to."For the price of the GT 240 it performs too slowly, and for the performance of the GT 240 it costs too much. We cannot under any circumstances recommend buying a GT 240, there are simply better cards out there for the price."
Its faster than an HD 4670, uses less power than a "green" edition 9800 GT, runs cool and quiet and is physically small. A great many pre-built PCs with weak power supplies would benefit not to mention its uses for HTPCs.
KikassAssassin - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
The funny thing about the vendors not wanting to send you cards knowing that they'd get a poor review is that this actually gives me more respect for Asus and EVGA.AznBoi36 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Not really. ASUS is pretty big, so such a review probably won't change anything. EVGA well, we all know EVGA.The one that pulled out is probably a small, less well known partner. If that is the case, then it's understandable that a low performing product might hurt the brand value in the eyes of (average joe sixpack).