ECS GeForce GT240 512MB Video Card Review :: Features

• Specially designed single-slot cooling solution (Option)
• Specially designed cooler from Arctic Cooling
• NVIDIA Unified Architecture
• NVIDIA CUDA Technology
• NVIDIA PhysX Technology
• NVIDIA PureVideo HD Technology
• Dual-link HDCP Capable
• High Definition 1080p Display Support
• Dual-Link DVI, VGA and HDMI 1.3a support
• Microsoft DirectX 10.1 Shader Model 4.1 support
• OpenGL 3.2 support
• DirectCompute support
• OpenCL support
• Microsoft Windows 7 support
• NVIDIA 3D Vision support
• PCI Express 2.0 support
• 550MHz core clock
• 1700MHz GDDR5 memory
• 128-bit memory
• 727 Million transistors
• 54.4GB/second memory bandwidth

The ECS GeForce GT 240 PCI-E GEN2 DVI+CRT+HDMI 512MB DDR5 card based upon NVIDIA’s GT215 chip which was first seen in the mobile space on the GeForce GT260M and GT250M. These mobile chips were NVIDIA’s first to be manufactured on TSMC’s 40nm process. The desktop version of the GT240 has 727 million transistors on a 139mm2 die. supported. The technology is pretty impressive as Doc and I saw a demo of it running on a computer recently.

The GT 240 has 96 Stream Processors. If that number if familiar, it is because that is the same number of processors that the 9600GT which this card is replacing sported. The number of ROPS is the same as that of the GT 220 at 8, but the number of texture units on the chip has doubled from 16 to the 32 on the GT 240. Basically the GT240 is double a GT220 with a slower clock speed.supported. The technology is pretty impressive as Doc and I saw a demo of it running on a computer recently.

The GT 240 is the first NVIDIA card to use GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit memory bus. ATI released their first GDDR5 card in the form of the Radeon HD 4870 in 2008, but this is the first NVIDIA card to use the new memory. GDDR5 memory doubles the memory bandwidth of the card compared to GDDR3 memory, meaning that the 128-bit 1700MHz memory provides a 54.4GB/second memory bandwidth to the GT240 card. supported. The technology is pretty impressive as Doc and I saw a demo of it running on a computer recently.

The main features added to the GT 240 from the GT 200 core that the card came from is the addition of DirectX 10.1 features. NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800GTX was the first card to support DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0. With the advent of the GT 210, 220 and 240, NVIDIA has moved to supporting the same features as found on their competition from a year ago in the form of DirectX 10.1. DirectX 10.1 introduces enhancements to FSAA including requiring 32-bit precision on all operations, parallel cube mapping and updated hardware. The GT 240 fully supports DirectX 10.1, bringing up to par with the ATI HD 4xxx series of cards in feature support but lacks DX 11 support.supported. The technology is pretty impressive as Doc and I saw a demo of it running on a computer recently.

Game physics has always been important in games. Remember the first time you used the Gravity Gun in Half Life 2? A small company called Ageia developed a new API called PhysX which was both a hardware and software solution. Game developers began taking advantage of PhysX in their games, but it wasn’t until NVIDIA bought Ageia that game physics really took off. The problem was that the installed base of PhysX cards on the market was in the tens of thousands, which meant that the hardware support for the standards was not present. NVIDIA soon released drivers for PhysX that enabled PhysX effects on NVIDIA cards bringing an instant install base of millions of cards. PhysX allows features like realistic smoke, fog, destructible environments, debris and more to happen. Games like Batman Arkham Asylum, Mirror’s Edge and Darkest of Days use PhysX throughout the games.supported. The technology is pretty impressive as Doc and I saw a demo of it running on a computer recently.

3D Vision is a technology allows the use of Stereoscopic glasses with a 120MHz flat panel monitor to show 3D images on the screen rather than a simulation of a 3D image. With the advent of 3D televisions set to come to pass in 2010 and Blu-ray 3D specification finalized and announced on December 17, 2009 by the BDA, the future of 3D content is a safe bet. NVIDIA says that the GT220 and GT240 cards will work with the new standard as well as their next generation GF100 cards. The GeForce GT240 supports AVC Multi-View CODEC which is expected to be the standard on how 3D content will be encoded to Blu-ray discs. 3D movies, 3D pictures and 3D websites will be supported. The technology is pretty impressive as Doc and I saw a demo of it running on a computer recently.