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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MadMan007 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Yup, iyo (in your opinion.) However it's clear from browsing just about any hardware forum for sale section that the used video card market is quite healthy. So if iyo it's a non-starter then you would be free to ignore such comparisons, but it's impossible for others to add such comparisons except by using indirect comparisons.Spoelie - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
"That leaves the 4670, which the GT 240 beats."Except that you compared the GT240 to a 512MB 4670. You can get a 1GB 4670 for $75/$65 before/after rebate, or $70 without rebate.
The extra 512MB would bump up its performance and it still is a lot cheaper than a GT 240.
I can still find several 4770/4850 in stock, for now.
mczak - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
The GT240 DDR3 doesn't beat the HD 4670 512MB if I look at these benchmarks, seems to be about a draw. The HD 4670 is significantly cheaper however. The 1GB HD 4670 are not going to be faster, in fact they are (at settings which are playable at least hence usually not limited by the amount of ram) slightly slower because they use a bit slower ddr3 memory instead of gddr3.The gddr5 version of the GT240 is faster than the HD 4670, I think it will be interesting to see how it'll fare against the HD 5670 (redwood based). If those early leaks are any indication, performance could be close, but I'd suspect the 5670 will draw less power, have more features (DX11, EyeFinity), and not be more expensive.
samspqr - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
I wouldn't say the 240 beats the 4670: it is faster at high quality settings, where fps are unplayable with both cards; at quality settings that mean playable fps, they are kind of even, aren't they?Ryan Smith - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
And just to reply to myself, the 5750 is still suffering from AMD's price inflation. At its MSRP it's worth a look, but at current prices it's in a different price bracket altogether.Zebo - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
How can AMD price 5750 near it's MSRP when two smoke a 5850 and would be cheaper?Zebo - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
MSRP of $109 and beats anything below $150, Thus it's repriced at ~140vol7ron - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Could you maybe explain why the 9800GT was not covered in the tests, but was talked about a lot on the intro. page?To me that makes no sense. "We'll tell you how the card compares physically, but we won't show you how it compares in practice."
Spacecomber - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
I wondered the same thing. I believe that the 8800GT has the same specifications as the 9800GT; so, it will give you a pretty good idea of how the GT240 stacks up to the 9800GT.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Correct. We list an 8800 GT in our tests because that's the specific card we used, but 8800 GT == 9800 GT in specs and performance.