MSI’s N210-MD512H is priced as the ultimate budget card, and it performs accordingly. It’s slower than next-tier cards by a significant amount, but it’s still fast enough that it can at least run every game in our test suite at some level, which is going to be better than what most IGP-based systems can do right now. It goes without saying that you can buy much faster cards even among the limited selection of the low-profile market, but any such card is going to cost a great deal more than $30. So much like the Radeon HD 5450 we took a look at last week, this is a card best suited for buyers moving up from an IGP while needing to do so on a very limited budget.
Looking at our data, we’re a bit surprised that NVIDIA didn’t make the reference G210 design a passively cooled card. Based on MSI’s use of a double-wide heatsink, G210 is plenty suitable for passive operation and likely even a single-wide operation with some care. For a card like the G210, we can’t think of any good reason to use a cooler with a fan if there’s enough room in a computer to use a card with a heatsink. To that end MSI’s G210 looks to be one of the best G210 cards available since it’s one of the only ones with a passive cooler.
We do have a single disappointment though, and that’s for HTPC use. We’re less concerned about the audio limitations (let’s be fair, this card launched back in the summer of 2009) as we are the results of our video test. We weren’t expecting to get great quality out of an entry-level card but we were expecting it to at least fall back gracefully on deinterlacing. The fact that it’s the only card that can’t at least do something smoothly on the Cheese Slices test is disheartening.
Finally, it’ll be interesting to see what NVIDIA does to replace the G210 late this year. It’s reasonable to assume that GF100 will cascade down in to a part similar to G210, which will be a definite benefit for NVIDIA since it means they can bring complete audio bitstreaming to a card at this price point. What we’re left wondering is how they’re going to do this: do they do a 40nm GF100 derivative, or do they push the envelope some and do a 28nm part.
Since G210 is already based on 40nm, a GF100 derivative is ultimately going to be bigger than the GT218 GPU which makes it harder to offer a card at $30. A 28nm GPU would presumably let them pack in GF100/DX11 functionality without expanding the die, but a 28nm product this year is ultimately going to be dependent on how well Global Foundries’ 28nm process is coming along.
Of course we’ll first have to see how GF100 does when it finally launches next month…
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gumdrops - Thursday, February 18, 2010 - link
Where can I find this card for $30? Froogle and Newegg both list this card at $40 which is only $2 cheaper than a 5450. In fact, the cheapest 210 of *any* brand is $38.99.With only a $2-$5 difference to the 5450, is it really value for money to go with this card?
Taft12 - Thursday, February 18, 2010 - link
In a word: Noncix.com has the BFG version of this card on sale for $29.99CAD, but Ryan makes it pretty clear the MSI is the only OEM that produces a G210 worth owning
mindless1 - Thursday, February 18, 2010 - link
If building for a small form factor system you have to be a bit more concerned because you may not have any place to put bigger 92+mm fans, so for any particular airflow rate your smaller fans are running at higher RPM already.If you are building towards low noise, your system will be quieter by having a lower intake and exhaust rate, then a very low RPM fan on a heatsink instead of a passive heatsink.
That way it will also accumulate less dust, and help cool other areas like the power regulation circuit (mosfets). It also makes a product more compatible to have a single-height heatsink without an elaborate construction to maximize surface area like you'd need if that single height sink were passive.
Don't fear or avoid fans, just avoid high(er) RPM fans. Low RPM fans are inaudible, last a long time if they don't pick a very low quality fan.
greenguy - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - link
You've got a good point there - that's why I went with the megahalems and a pwm fan (as opposed to ninja), and scythe kama pwm fans on both intake and exhaust (on 400rpm or so). I probably should have done the same with the graphics card, but didn't do the research. Do you have any pointers to specific cards or coolers?I might have to come up with a more localized fan or some ducting.
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
I just wanted to say, great article and I love the table on Page 1. Without it, it's so hard to keep model numbers straight.teko - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
Come on, does it really make sense to benchmark Crysis for this card? Choose something that the card buyer will actually use/play!killerclick - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
Once my discrete graphics card died on me on a saturday afternoon and since I didn't have a spare or an IGP my computer was useless until monday around noon. I'm going to get this card to keep as a spare. It has passive cooling, it's small, it's only $30 and I'm sure it'll perform better than any IGP even if I had one.greenguy - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
I was quite amazed to see this review of the card I had just purchased two of. I wasn't sure, but I have since determined that you can run two 1920x1200 monitors from the one card (using the DVI port and the HDMI port). This is pretty cool - it doesn't force you to use the D-SUB port if you want multi-monitors, so you have all that fine detailed resolutiony goodness.It looks very promising that I will be able to get the quad monitor in portrait setup working in linux like I wanted to, using two of these cards rather than an expensive quadro solution. Fingers crossed that I can do it also in FreeBSD or OpenSolaris. I really want the self-healing properties of ZFS, because this will be a developer workstation and I don't want any errors not of my own introduction.
I'm using a P183 case, and I've found that the idle temperature of the heatsinks are 61 degrees C without the front fan (the one in front of the top 3.5" enclosure). Installing a Scythe Kama PWM fan there I got this down to 47 degrees C. (Note that both of these I had both exhaust fans installed, though they are only doing about 500rpm tops.)
Using nvidia-settings to monitor the actual temperature of the GPU itself, I am getting a temperature of 74 degrees C of one card that is running two displays with compiz on, and the other is running at 54 degrees C.
Note that the whole system is a Xeon 3450 (equivalent to i5-750 with HT), 8GB RAM, with Seasonic X-650, and it is idling at 62-67 Watts. Phenomenal.
Exelius - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
I'd be interested in seeing how this card performs as an entry-level CAD card. I understand it's not going to set any records, but for a low-end CAD station coupled with 8GB RAM and a core i7, does this card perform acceptably with AutoCAD 2010 (or perform at all?)I'm not a CAD guy, btw, so don't flame me too hard if this is totally unacceptable (and I know you can't benchmark AutoCAD so I'm not expecting numbers.) This card just shows up in a lot of OEM configurations so I'm curious if I'd need to replace it with something beefier for a CAD station.
LtGoonRush - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
The reality is that the cards at this pricepoint don't really provide any advantages over onboard video to justify their cost. There's so little processing power that they still can't game at all, can't provide a decent HTPC experience, all they're capable of is the same basic video decode acceleration as any non-Atom video chipset. This sort of makes sense when you're talking about an Ion 2 drop-in accelerator for an Atom system to compete with Broadcom, but I just don't see the value proposition over AMD HD 4200 or Intel GMA X4500 (much less Intel HD Graphics in Clarkdale). I'd like to see how the upcoming AMD 800-series chipsets with onboard graphics stack up.