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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samspqr - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
the cards are in shops already, firmly in 9800gt territory, and nearly 20% more expensive than 9600gt... but at these prices it means you're just paying a $10 premium in order to have the newer card; ati's replacement of 4870/4850 with 5770/5750 meant a much bigger premium for new-but-equally-performing tech (you had bigger power savings there, though)and, of course, I missed some comparisons with ATI cards in the conclusion, something to the tune of: "in any case, it is just sad that nvidia is unable to manufacture new chips to compete with anything ati has, other than a 4670"
nafhan - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
The reason ATI can have a big premium on the 57XX (and 58XX) is that they've got no competition. The 57XX series in particular has PLENTY of room to drop in price as it's a much simpler card to build than the 4850/70 cards that it is replacing. Nvidia has similar performance for a similar price, but it's based on older tech with higher power consumption. The prices will probably stick until Nvidia comes out with a real challenger for the 5 series (i.e. Fermi).Spoelie - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Why is the GT240 only compared to nvidia cards in the entire review (except for the benchmark images)? It would be to the benefit of the reader to also know how it compares to ATi in the value for money area. What is the current price of say a 4670/4770/4850 in 512MB/1GB configurations and how would that compare in terms of value?Also, with such a small impact, I think the evga card should have been left out of the factory-clock benchmark graphs for future lookup convenience & easy relative comparison. The performance difference compared to the normal card could have been summarized on a dedicated page.
pugster - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...=AFC-Ben...Saw on newegg that you can get this 240gt with 1gb ddr3 memory for $58 after rebate.
plague911 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
I think the over all point was that you may as well not even consider the GT240. If you wanted a generic ATI/NVIDIA comparison you would use a different nvidia card. Not to say that nvidia may not beat ATI in a comparison but a different nvidia would be a better choice for the comparisonRyan Smith - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
The 4800 and 4700 series have effectively been discontinued, the remaining cards are fairly rare and usually overpriced. There's little to gain comparing the GT 240 to a 4770 or 4850, as you can no longer get ahold of those cards for reasonable prices most of the time.That leaves the 4670, which the GT 240 beats.
hydrocarbon - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
I can grab a 1GB 4850 off NewEgg now for a hundred and ten bucks, or a 512MB for a hundred. "Rare", sure, but "overpriced"? They're cheaper now than they've ever been, especially if you consider those are prices w/o rebates.MadMan007 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Just FYI there is such a thing as the used video card market ;) while you can't compare pricing yourself and include it in the written details a savvy user who is looking at used cards will be able to do so.Taft12 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Yes, but bear in mind the lack of warranty (XFX double lifetime notwithstanding) and unknown overclocking/stress history. These things make used video card purchases a non-starter.Taft12 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
... a non-starter IMHO of course