Shootouts

NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 - New Mainstream Arrivals

By Kenny Yeo - 17 Nov 2009

Freshly Minted Mainstream Cards

Freshly Minted Mainstream Cards

The release of NVIDIA's GeForce GT 220 cards meant that the GT200 class of GPUs were no longer restricted solely to the realm of high-end graphics. And now NVIDIA is following up on the GeForce GT 220 with yet another affordable 40nm process technology based graphics solution - the GeForce GT 240.

Positioned by NVIDIA as a low-cost graphics solution that lie in between the GeForce 9800 GT and 9600 GT, it has 96 CUDA cores (as NVIDIA likes to call them now), which is actually pretty decent, considering it is just 16 cores short of the 9800 GT. Other crucial tech specs include 32 texture mapping units and 16 raster operating units, which are pretty much in-line with other cards of its caliber. More comparisons at the end of the page with other GPUs.

We have also learnt that the GeForce GT 240 will come in either 512MB or 1GB flavors, and vendors have the choice of choosing between GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory to equip the cards.

NVIDIA is fortifying the GT200 class with yet more low to mainstream offerings. This time, it is the GeForce GT 240.

In terms of clock speeds, the GeForce GT 240 in 'stock' configuration will come clocked at 550MHz at the core, 1340MHz at the shaders and depending on the memory type equipped, 2000MHz DDR for GDDR3 variants and 3400MHz DDR for GDDR5 ones.

Despite the rather healthy specifications, don't for a moment let them fool you into thinking that this is a mainstream gaming card, because they are signs that point towards the new GeForce GT 240 being a basic SKU. For one, it doesn't require a PCIe power connector for power. And secondly, it lacks an SLI connector for future performance boost options. These are some of the 'features' commonly noted on less powerful cards and sadly the GT 240 is amongst them.

Fortunately, to sweeten the deal, the new GeForce GT 240 brings about full PhysX and CUDA support, and is also DirectX 10.1 compatible. So it's at least a tad more updated than its GeForce 9 brothers, but not yet DirectX 11 compliant for which we'll have to wait for the Fermi architecture based offspring sometime next year.

Here's a look at how the new GT 240 stands against competitive comparison SKUs.

GPU-Z had some problems correctly identifying aspects of the GeForce GT 240.

Comparison
Model NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT ATI Radeon HD 4770 NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT ATI Radeon HD 4670
Core Code GT215 G92 RV740 GT216 G94 RV730
Transistor Count Unknown 754 million 826 million 486 million 505 million 514 million
Manufacturing Process 40nm 65 / 55nm 40nm 40nm 65nm 55nm
Core Clock 550MHz 600MHz 750MHz 615MHz 650MHz 750MHz
Stream Processors 96 112 640 48 64 320
Stream Processor Clock 1340MHz 1800MHz 750MHz 1335MHz 1625MHz 750MHz
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF) units 32 56 32 16 32 32
Raster Operator Units (ROP) 16 16 16 8 16 8
Memory Clock 1800MHz DDR (GDDR3) / 3600MHz DDR (GDDR5) 1800MHz DDR 3600MHz DDR 1580 MHz DDR 1800MHz DDR 2000MHz DDR
DDR Memory Bus 128-bit 256-bit 128-bit 128-bit 256-bit 128-bit
PCI Express Interface PCIe x 16 ver 2.0 PCIe x 16 ver 2.0 PCIe x 16 ver 2.0 PCIe x16 ver 2.0 PCIe x 16 ver 2.0 PCIe x16 ver 2.0
PCIe Power Connectors None 1 x 6-pin 1 x 6-pin None 1 x 6-pin None
Multi-GPU Technology None SLI CrossFireX None SLI CrossFireX
DVI Output Support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
HDCP Output Support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Street Price Launch Price: Below US$99 ~US$105 ~US$105 ~US$80 ~US$100 ~US$75
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