GeForce GT 240: Low Power, High Performance, Sub-$100

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rdhood

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[citation][nom]impaledmango[/nom]I can see this taking over the 4670, 4650 in the small htpc market.[/citation]

Yes. It takes the "most powerful graphics card without an extra power header" crown. It will definitely be worth a look when it drops to $80ish.

Some folks over in some of the notebook websites have been adding/building outboard graphics engines off of the notebooks expresscard slot. Currently, the HD 4670 is the graphics card of choice because of it's low power, bang-for-the-buck. The expresscard/pcie slots don't give a lot of bandwidth for hugely higher throughput but when expresscard2 comes along, these low power cards will offer a lot of gaming capability for the cheap notebook with a slot.
 
WINTERLORD

WINTERLORD

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this is a pretty good review. these cards look sweet no sli support but i wonder how the stack up as a dedicated psyhx card? also i would love to know how well they overclock. the asus 9600gso my fiance has i overclock to 718gpu core 1770shader 950memory without a hitch. but back to psyhx i bet these would do well as a cheap dedicated physx for a 9800gtx
 
Onyx2291

Onyx2291

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I'd say it performs surprisingly well to what I expected. Very good for the price. I probably won't be after it when I do a full computer upgrade. But great for a low end upgrade.
 
brockh

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It's not overclocked and it's only 512MB... The one reviewed was overclocked on core/memory and was 1GB. What's so hard to understand? The problem isn't that the card isn't available under $99, it's that the cards reviewed are the highest possible end version of the ones out and don't reflect the ones that are cheap. It's like reviewing an XFX XXX OC double-memory version that costs 25%+ more than a reference card for a product launch with the reference card price in the title.

Articles like that get your customers going out and buying the $90 versions and then wondering where the performance went. It's bad marketing, at best -- not necessarily Tom's fault. I'm sure it went like this:

NVidia to Toms: We're launching the GT 240; We're having our partners send you versions of the card. It's going to be priced under $100.
Click to expand...

By saying that they're not necessarily wrong, but they're being shady since they probably knew the partners were gonna send the expensive ones to review... Like I said, Tom's does an okay job of making sure people know these aren't reference versions, but what I don't understand is why they didn't just use an OC or better version for the ATi card(s).
 
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For anyone looking for a decent card with a low idle power draw, the GT 240 looks pretty darn good. Many HTPCs are on 24/7. Even if you game for 2 hr/day, that's 22hrs/day where your graphics card is sitting idle. The 30W difference at idle between the GT 240 and 9600GT is HUGE!!

Previously, the HD 4670 was your best bet for low power but performance was lacking. Now that the 5700/5800 series is out, you can get fantastic performance with excellent power consumption, but at a price. The GT 240 offers better gaming performance than a HD 4670 without the cost of a HD 5750 while maintaining a low power draw while idling the other 22hrs/day.

Once ATI releases their low end 5x00 series cards in January, NVidia is going to be in even more trouble.

If you don't care about idle power consumption, a 9800GT Green/Low Power edition gives better performance for possibly less after rebate while still using less than 75W (no PCI-E 6-pin power required).
 
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bloggerad1970

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Shame on you nVidia for releasing a Dx 10.1 card when Dx 11 ATI cards are just around the corner (If I have waited this long, I definitely will wait a little longer and keep playing on integrated graphics...) The only thing you have going for you is the CUDA and 3D vision.

Shame on you Tom's for comparing an overclocked nvidia 240, an overclocked 9600gt and a maxxed out 9600gso with a stock Radeon 4670. I want a comparison between a DDR3 gt 240, a 128-bit 9600gso and a stock 4670 when the ddr3 gt240 card becomes available...Now THAT would be a fair comparison.
 
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The graphs could be updated REALLY quickly with some cards like 4830/4770, etc... but I guess they're going to stay just like they are. That way, people who stumble onto this site via google can glance at some graphs and see that Nvidia dominates the ~$100 pricepoint *raucous laughter*. Nvidia's gotta get their money's worth out of this article.
 
Onus

Onus

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I had high hopes; I wanted to want one of these. At the stated prices, the GT 240 would finally dethrone the 4670 in every category, from performance to power. Unfortunately, those prices turned out to be a cruel hoax. I kind of wish Tom's had waited to be certain that they'd been given accurate information, or until vendors listed the reviewed cards at the stated prices. This made the article an unfortunate letdown, even if it was the vendors making nVidia into a liar.
That said, I'm surprised at how critical a lot of people have been. Did you not READ the ENTIRE article (and not just look at the pretty graphs)? I see no deceit of any kind there. The data may be a little skewed in an assortment of ways, but ALL of them are described in the text.
Anyway, as I read the performance data, I thought "this isn't for upgraders at all, but looks ideal for someone building new..." until I saw the absurd pricing. At the actual prices, this card makes very little sense. By the time they drop, ATI's "low" end 5xxx series will be too close to release to ignore. Sorry, nVidia: FAIL (even if your vendors may have done it to you).
 
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NotSoSiniSter

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Yea the GT has a market for certain things. HTPCs that do light gaming, perfect.

Nvidia better woop butt when they release there GTX300. Or else no one will forgive them.
 
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Considering the other 200 series are too LOUD for an HTPC why would you think this makes an ideal HTPC card? It's too much for an HTPC (an 8400 is all you need to play back blu-ray) and too little for gaming.

Yes, it beats an entry level card with less than reference clocks which has been available for about a year (and most recently at $35). Not a big surprise there. Glad to see the 8800GTX from 2006 is still winner, champion, and still faster than anything NV is going to make in 2009 (260 on up have been EOLed).

These will probably sell like hotcakes to the guys who bought 9800GTs to upgrade from 8800GTS and 5200FX to upgrade from ti4200s.
 
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EVGA has released 3 models of this card (no one's sure what the difference is between two specific models, but there are visual differences between the cards -- more than just the PCB colour), for US$99.

Nobody in their right mind cares about SLI, and given the demographic for this card, buyers aren't going to either.

I was considering replacing my 9800GT with a GT 240 when I read this article, until I realised that absolutely no one offers this card with dual DVI output. Purely DVI + D-Sub. That's really, really sad in this day and age. I thought such absurdities were limited to ATI cards -- which I have no interest in due to 5-6 year old driver bugs (spent way too much time with ATI trying to debug their crap), and absurdly noisy HSFs (do not tell me to buy an after-market HSF -- the year is almost 2010, not 2000).
 
skora

skora

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Sorry for not reading through 100 post to see if this has already been mentioned.

I agree with everyone that the 240 isn't in the right price bracket to be a short term winner. They need to keep focus on the short term, because when the 5670 (ore equivalent) launches, this will be just another back seat product.

My hangup on this article has to do with the the 4670/9600GSO comparison. If someone is going to be buying a new card, why would you use an overpowered 9600GSO that you can't buy anymore? And further more, why use an underclocked 4670 for reference with non reference nvidia cards. It doesn't do me any good when choosing a GPU to look at the hierarchy chart in your stellar best for the money article and see a 4670 even with a 9600 GSO but see the GSO take a 10% performance win (in everything but L4D.) Seeing that, I'm going to buy a 9600GSO and be sorely disappointed that it doesn't perform that well. But I bought the current 9600 GSO. Its a bit misleading cleeve. And isn't the nod to the 4670 every month have to do with its OC headroom? Apples for apples!!!!! OC for OC!!!!!!!
 
cleeve

cleeve

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[citation][nom]skora[/nom]It's a bit misleading cleeve. [/citation]

Well, I don't think it's misleading if you read the accompanying text, I pointed it out no less than three or four times in the article to ensure people understand what they are looking at.

[citation][nom]skora[/nom]And isn't the nod to the 4670 every month have to do with its OC headroom? Apples for apples!!!!! OC for OC!!!!!!![/citation]

I give the 4670 the nod every month for it's low price/low power usage combo, not its overclocking headroom. Not that it's a bad overclocker, but that's not the sole reason it's such a great card.

And let's keep in mind that in the real world, for whatever reason, Radeons tend to be sold at reference speeds while Nvidia cards tend to offer a lot more overclocked models.

Then we get into all sorts of issues: is it fair to underclock certain cards to reference speeds when they are commonly sold as overclocked models?

The point is, I've given everyone the information I have and have run the benches in good faith. The results are sound and I went out of my way to let everyone know the conditions of the tests; nothing was swept under the rug to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. I said time and time again that the 9600 GSO sample we have onhand is a 256-bit version, and that certain cards are overclocked. I told people so they could keep that in mind when interpreting the results. Everyone has access to that information, and should be processing it along with the benchmarks to form their own conclusions.

It happens to be my conclusion based on the information at hand, in addition to my past experience with the way pricing works, that because the GT 240 should be cheaper to manufacture prices will likely fall to 9600 levels or below.

The performance and explanations are there, and you certainly don't have to agree with my conclusion, but I stand behind it as I believe it's a valid one. If it turns out that GT 240 prices stay higher than 8800 GT prices, well, I'll apologize. I've been wrong more times than I can count, and I'll be wrong again. I never, ever claimed to be perfect - all I can do is offer the best conclusion I can formulate and share it.

But who will be buying these cards when the 8800 GT costs $90?
Plain and simple, the GT 240 will have to drop or nobody will buy the thing.
 
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change the title of the article.....
tested cards are more than $100............
and what about "high perfomance".........
 
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Tom used to be IT site.
These days it becomes more of advertising site.
This article is joke (bad one).
 
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