14 DAY TRIAL // Those who don't want to skip buying a computer component for Christmas just so they can save some cash for an upcoming Fermi card now have three new video boards to choose from. The adapters are capable of matching and even topping the performance of most of the mid-range cards. They are the GeForce GT 240 D3 512MB, D3 1GB and D5 512MB.
All three items have similar main features. They are the first line of the NVIDIA 40nm GPUs that are capable of handling GDDR5 memory. They are built using the 40nm GT215 graphics processing unit, 96 stream processors, which give way to an impressive level of performance while staying affordable, and the adapters have a memory interface of 128 bit and total memory of 512 MB GDDR3/5 (with 1GB of memory for the D5).
The GT 240 D5 is the most impressive of the lot, featuring DirectX 10.1 compatibility and incorporating the NVIDIA CUDA technology and PhysX support, which not only makes it excellent for Windows 7, but also a fitting workhorse for mostly any game engines and probably all graphically intensive applications of any other kind. The video cards also boast D-Sub, DVI and HDMI ports and their shader and GPU clocks are set to run at 550MHz and 1340MHz, respectively. Also, the D3 have their GDDR3 memory set to 1800MHz, whereas the D5 version uses GDDR5 VRAM set to run at 3600MHz.
A very interesting and appealing element of these boards is the cooling system. Completely made of metal, its cover is made of aluminum, which not only assists in the heat dissipation but also gives the product an aesthetically pleasing aspect. Not only that, but the exclusive, dual slot, custom-designed cooling mechanism designed by Galaxy Microsystems proved to keep the GPU running at temperatures ten to 15 degrees lower than the standard.
These cards' retail prices are expected to range between 90 and 100 EUR.