NVIDIA just announced a new card - the GT 240 - based on a new chip, the GT215. This chip, etched in 40 nm, is for the world of mid-range (and even entry level) in offering "only" 96 stream processors. Recall that the high-end cards current brand offering 240 stream processors and a card output in November 2007 (the GeForce 8800 GT) was equipped with 112 stream processors.

A complete map

The maps based on the GT215 GPU are equipped with 96 processors of the GPU fluctuate and operates at 550 MHz (1 360 MHz for the shaders). Engraved in 40nm, the chip consumes little: 9 W ideal and 70 W at maximum in operation. Now about memory: NVIDIA propose either to use the GDDR5 (128-bit) 1.7 GHz (54.4 GB / s) is of GDDR3 at 1 GHz (32 GB / s). In both cases, the cards will be available with 512 MB or 1 GB of memory. Interestingly for video enthusiasts, the PureVideo engine has been improved and now supports DivX (and any format based on MPEG-4 - Advanced - Simple Profile) and an HD Audio controller was added to the maps, which lets take over the sound through the HDMI output so simple. For video cards support DVI, VGA, HDMI (1.3a) and DisplayPort (1.1), with (as usual) only two outputs available simultaneously.

In practice, the maps based on the GT215 should not exceed $ 99, which positioning is fairly average, since the prices of AMD cards. And remember that in May 2008, NVIDIA had released the GeForce 9600 GSO, a card with 96 stream processors and 384 MB of memory (or more) with a bandwidth of 38 Gb / s, all for $ 129. .. And the card itself was a renowned GeForce 8800 GS...