AXLE GeForce 210 Video Card Review

VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2010-05-11

In this review I will test a video card from AXLE, which sports the latest low end GPU from Nvidia, the GeForce 210. In the tests it will go against a RADEON HD 4550 and will see which one wins in terms of overall performance.

Introduction

Introduction

Madshrimps (c)


At first I want to thank AXLE for providing me the GeForce 210 video card for testing and reviewing.

Madshrimps (c)


About AXLE :
"AXLE International Holding Limited being NV Card Manufacturer, insist to provide the best to its customers, not only for the products but also the service. The only belief is quality maintains the survival of the company.

Established in 1988, over 20 years grew and developed under keen competition, AXLE found it's own way - service & quality. Today, we have our factory with over 600 workforce in Mainland China with capacity of 190k per month.

Headquarter in Hong Kong, sales offices in Germany, Dubai and China, AXLE products are distributed all over the world, such as in Asia, Middle East, Russia, Eastern and Western Europe. Sales turnover exceeds US$45 million in the past financial year. Since 2000, AXLE became one of the biggest NV Card manufacturer in Asia Pacific region. This provides the most accurate information and cost advantage to AXLE.”

Product overview

Product overview

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Features :
NVIDIA® Unified Architecture
Fully unified graphics core dynamically allocates work to geometry, vertex, physics, or pixel shading operations, delivering superior graphics processing power.
NVIDIA CUDA™ Parallel Computing Architecture
CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processor cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks - such as video transcoding - delivering incredible performance improvements over traditional CPUs.
DirectCompute Support
Full support for DirectCompute, Microsoft’s GPU computing API.
OpenCL Support
Full support for OpenCL GPU computing API.
Microsoft® Windows® 7 Support
Windows 7 is the next generation operating system that will mark a dramatic improvement in the way the OS takes advantage of the graphics processing unit (GPU) to provide a more compelling user experience. By taking advantage of the GPU for both graphics and computing, Windows 7 will not only make today’s PCs more visual and more interactive but also ensure that they have the speed and responsiveness customers want.
NVIDIA® GeForce® Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
Delivers a proven record of compatibility, reliability, and stability with the widest range of games and applications. GeForce drivers provide the best out-of-box experience for every user and deliver continuous performance and feature updates over the life of GeForce GPUs.
GigaThread™ Technology
Massively multi-threaded architecture supports thousands of independent, simultaneous threads, providing extreme processing efficiency in advanced, next generation shader programs.
NVIDIA® Lumenex™ Engine
Delivers stunning image quality and floating point accuracy at ultra-fast frame rates.
16x Anti-aliasing Technology
Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.
128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR) Lighting
Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects—now with support for anti-aliasing.
NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology2
The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
Hardware Decode Acceleration
Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV, DivX, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 HD and SD movies without the need for a dual or quad-core CPU.
Dual-stream Hardware Acceleration
Supports picture-in-picture content for the ultimate interactive Blu-ray and HD DVD movie experience.
Dynamic Contrast Enhancement & Color Stretch
Provides post-processing and optimization of High Definition movies on a scene by scene basis for spectacular picture clarity.
Enhanced Error Resilience
Correct errors or losses in broadcast content to ensure crisp, high quality playback.
Advanced Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing
Sharpens HD and standard definition interlaced content on progressive displays, delivering a crisp, clear picture that rivals high-end home-theater systems.
High-Quality Scaling
Enlarges lower resolution movies and videos to HDTV resolutions, while maintaining a clear, clean image. Also provides downscaling of videos, including high-definition, while preserving image detail.
Inverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction)
Recovers original film images from films-converted-to-video (DVDs, 1080i HD content), providing more accurate movie playback and superior picture quality.
Bad Edit Correction
When videos are edited, the edits can disrupt the normal 3:2 or 2:2 pulldown cadence. PureVideo uses advanced processing techniques to detect poor edits, recover the original content, and display perfect picture detail frame after frame for smooth, natural looking video.
Noise Reduction
Improves movie image quality by removing unwanted artifacts.
Edge Enhancement
Sharpens movie images by providing higher contrast around lines and objects.
Dual-link HDCP Capable
Designed to meet the output protection management (HDCP) and security specifications of the Blu-ray Disc format, allowing the playback of encrypted movie content on PCs when connected to HDCP-compliant displays.
Dual-link DVI Support
Able to drive industry’s largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays up to 2560x1600 and with support for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).
HDMI 1.3a Support
Fully integrated support for HDMI 1.3a including xvYCC, Deep color and 7.1 digital surround sound.
PCI Express 2.0 Support
Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.
Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 Support
DirectX 10.1 GPU with full Shader Model 4.1 support delivers unparalleled levels of graphics realism and film-quality effects.
OpenGL 3.1 Optimization and Support
Provides top-notch compatibility and performance for OpenGL applications.

Specifications :

589MHz core speed and 1402MHz Shader clock.
64bit DDR2, maximum memory of 512MB.
PCI-E 2.0
Dual RAMDAC at 400MHz
Dual-Link DVI ports, supports maximum 2560x1600 resolution.
Build for Windows Vista, fully supports DX10.1 and SM4.0
Low-Profile

Inside the box

Inside the box

The video card from AXLE comes in a little cardboard box, with a nice box art in the front; here we can see that the board features solid state capacitors which maximize its durability; there is a big sticker under the AXLE logo with the Arctic Cooling logo, which tells us that the cooling system is not proprietary, it is built by AC; also on the frontal part we can see that this video card is from the GeForce 200 series, does have 512MB VRam DDR2, 64bit :

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On the back of the box, we can see that with the help of this board we can obtain nice graphics, we can run high quality HD video and enjoy fully the Windows 7 Aero experience:

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On the right part, we can see the key product features, the minimum system requirements and the stuff included in the box. I might add that this board does not support Physx but the features are written for all GeForce 200 series :



Besides the board, inside the box we can find a yellow paper with special notes regarding the installation, a little user manual with the AXLE theme and a CD with drivers :

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The board is carefully protected in an anti-static bag :

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The card is little, it can be compared in size with the older low profile ATI RADEON HD 4550; the D-SUB connector can be disconnected from the card and with the help of a low profile bracket, which is not included in the package, we can install this video card in little sized cases; the fan that cools the heatsink is very nicely colored in yellow and on top of it we can find the AXLE logo :

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On both laterals of the heatsink made by Arctic Cooling, hot air is expelled:

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The fan is connected to the PCB with only 2 wires :

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Here is a close-u of the custom cooling; we can see that the model of the heatsink AXLE chose for this video card is L4 :

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On the back of the board, we can see a sticker with the video card serial number, its code name and 2 memory chips on the left, made by Quimonda :

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Here is a close-up to see what memory chips this card uses :

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Besides the D-SUB, we can see a HDMI and DVI connector, for output :

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Test Setup

Test Setup

Stefan's Test Setup
CPUCore i7 920 @ 3.2Ghz
Cooling Stock
MainboardAsrock X58 Extreme
MemoryG.Skill F3-12800CL8T-6GBPI PI Series
VGA
  • AXLE GeForce 210 512MB DDR2
  • ATI Radeon HD 4550
  • Other
  • Power Supply : Antec True Power New 750W
  • HDD : Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10


  • I have chosen a high-end platform to avoid bottlenecks. In this review, the GeForce 210 from Nvidia will go against the older RADEON HD 4550 from AMD, both aimed at the low end market.

    Here is the GPU-Z report regarding the video card specifications :

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    And a detailed report using the latest version of Everest Ultimate Edition :

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    Synthetic benchmarks

    Synthetic benchmarks

    We start of with a selection of synthetic benchmarks to measure the differences between the two contestants.

    First up are the Futuremark benchmarks:

    3DMark 2001

    [points]

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    3DMark 2003

    [points]

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    3DMark 2005

    [points]

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    3DMark 2006

    [points]

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    3DMark Vantage

    [points]

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    Unigine Heaven is a newer benchmark, neither of these cards can really run it fluently:

    Unigine Heaven

    [fps]

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    At lower resolutions and with older tests the Geforce 210 is trailing the HD 4550 10-20%, once we increase the resolution and IQ settings the HD 4550 is several times faster. Let’s find out if the same is true in real world games.

    Game benchmarks

    Game benchmarks

    We have a mix of new and older games lined up, some of them are playable at lower IQ and resolution, but neither of these products are capable video cards when you’re into gaming at any high resolution/IQ.

    World in Conflict

    [fps]

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    Devil May Cry 4

    [fps]

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    Street Fighter 4

    [fps]

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    Crysis

    [fps]

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    Left 4 Dead 1

    [fps]

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    Unreal Tournament 3

    [fps]

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    H.A.W.X.

    [fps]

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    Resident Evil 5

    [fps]

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    Stalker : Call of Pripyat

    [fps]

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    Call of Juarez

    [fps]

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    Far Cry 2

    [fps]

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    Conclusive Thoughts

    Conclusive Thoughts

    AXLE succeeded to build a nice looking, custom cooling video card which is not very expensive. The custom cooling that they have chosen is small; it fits the dimensions of the card exactly and is very silent. It is also worth mentioning that the heatsink barely gets warm even when running the most stressful applications and games. The card also offers a nice connectivity solution: D-SUB, HDMI and DVI.

    Madshrimps (c)


    Regarding the performance and put face-to-face with the older 4550 I could say I am a little disappointed regarding the GeForce 210 GPU from Nvidia. The framerates are very low and when we activate anti-aliasing, even at 4x, it simply kills the frame rate. In multiple tests, I have received framerates between 1-3 per second, and this cannot be called playable. Only some old games may be playable so definitely I won’t recommend this card for gaming. There are some exceptions, though, like Source based games or H.A.W.X..

    Both cards retail around the $40 mark, but looking at the features and performance numbers, it’s hard to recommend the Geforce 210 GPU.

    The card offers though a nice Windows Vista/ Windows 7 experience by running the Aero effects without any lag at all. It also runs HD movies without problems. The other downside would be that this card does not support PhysX, which could have increased a little its performance in some cases.

    I would like to thank again to AXLE for making this review possible.

    Madshrimps (c)

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