When tested 15 years ago: GeForce GT 240 with 1024 MB DDR3 was useless 17 comments
15 years ago, the Nvidia GeForce GT 240 was a budget graphics card that wasn’t really aimed at gamers. Nevertheless, the card partners offered the graphics card in four different memory versions – the unconvincing model with 1,024 MB DDR3 memory (test) was tested 15 years ago.
Three memory versions
The GeForce GT 240 was available with 512 MB or 1024 MB of memory. But that wasn’t enough: customers also had to choose between DDR3 and GDDR5 memory. This memory variety was coupled with a rather mediocre GPU. In the case of the DDR3 models, the memory bandwidth was 32,000 MB/s instead of the 54,400 MB/s of the GDDR5 models, because the memory is only 1000 MHz fast.
Radeon HD 4670 GeForce GT 240 GeForce 9600 GT Chip GeForce 9800 GT RV730 GT215 G94 G92 Transistors approx. 514 million approximately. Around 727 million. 505 million approximately. 754 million Manufacturing 55 nm 40 nm 55 nm Chip clock 750 MHz 550 MHz 650 MHz 600 MHz Shader clock 750 MHz 1360 MHz 1625 MHz 1512 MHz shader units
(MADD) 64 (5D) 96 (1D) 64 (1D) 112 (1D) FLOPS (MADD/ADD) 480 GFLOPS 392 GFLOPS 312 GFLOPS 508 GFLOPS ROPs 8 16 Pixel rate 6,000 MPix/s 4,400 MPix/s 10,400 MPix/s 9,600 MPix/s TMUs 32 56 TAUs 32 56 Text throughput 24,000 MTex/s 17,600 MTex/s 20,800 MTex/s 33,600 MTex/s Shader-Model SM 4.1 SM 4 Hybrid-CF/-SLI – Windows efficient
Power saving function ✓ – Memory quantity 512 MB GDDR3 512 MB DDR3/GDDR5
1024 MB DDR3/GDDR5 512 MB GDDR3 Memory 1000 MHz 1700 MHz
1000 MHz Memory interface 900 MHz 128-bit 256-bit Memory bandwidth 25,600 MB/s 54,400 MB/s
32,000 MB/s 57,600 MB/s
At just under $80, the Gainward GeForce GT 240 we tested was inexpensive, but not peerless. AMD already offered the ATi Radeon HD 5670 for 75 euros, which not only supported DirectX 11 but was also theoretically faster. Power was supplied entirely through the PCIe slot, as the graphics card drew less than 75 watts. The GPU was cooled by a dual-slot cooler with a 65mm axial fan in the middle of the cooler. The graphics card didn’t have fan control, so the fan was constantly spinning at the same speed.
Moderate performance
The Gainward GeForce GT 240 with 1,024 MB of DDR3 memory made a rather poor impression in practical use. Compared to the already slow GeForce GT 240 with GDDR5 memory, the graphics card had to lose an average of 12% more performance. Compared to AMD’s Radeon HD 5670, it was 25% slower. The older but also cheaper GeForce 9800 GT achieved a performance increase of almost 47 percent. The DDR3 version of the GeForce GT 240 was therefore not suitable for gamers.
At least when it comes to B grades, the Gainward GeForce GT 240 was convincing given its weak performance. The lack of fan control did not have a negative impact since the volume was generally low. The situation was similar with power consumption and GPU temperature, both very good. If you want to get a little more performance from the graphics card, you can expect almost ten percent more performance through overclocking. This means that the GeForce GT 240 was faster, but still the slowest graphics card in the test.
Conclusion
Techtip was unable to recommend the Gainward GeForce GT 240. Although the graphics card was cool, quiet, and power efficient, it was also quite slow. That’s not all, for the same price AMD offered a graphics card almost a third faster in the form of the Radeon HD 5670. This also supported modern DirectX 11.
In the category “In the test 15 years ago”, the editorial staff consults the test archives every Saturday since July 2017. We list the last 20 articles published in this series below:
AMD’s Radeon HD 5670 offered DirectX 11 for 79 euros. HTC‘s Touch2 was an economical smartphone at 270 euros. The advantage of SSDs over hard drives in everyday life. Orochi from Razer for the pleasure of playing on mobile via Bluetooth. BlackBerry’s Bold 9700 was a potential smartphone. New Super Mario Bros. was also a success. WiiNvidia’s cheap GeForce GT 240 was too expensive Noctua’s The NH-D14 was the ultimate CPU air cooler. The Radeon HD 5970 was fast and choppy. Corsair’s Obsidian 800D was ideal for water cooling. Saphir earned a recommendation over the Radeon HD 5750. AMD’s Eyefinity guaranteed gaming pleasure on three screens. ATI’s Radeon HD 5750 was too expensive despite a recommended price of 115 euros. 2 as a top shot compatible Silent coolerATis Radeon HD 5770 offered DirectX 11 from 140 eurosThe Radeon HD 5850 as an affordable entry-level DirectX 11ATis Radeon HD 5870 as the first graphics card with DirectX 11Intel Core i5-750, i7-860 and i7- 870 on Socket 1156Cooler Masters Hyper 212 More as a budget coolerIntel’s SSD X25-M Gen 2 was the champion with 280 MB/s
Even more content like this and many other reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner of the Techoutil forum.
Topics: DDR3 Gainward GeForce Nvidia Retro graphics cards
An engineer by training, Alexandre shares his knowledge on GPU performance for gaming and creation.
