VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2010-04-09
The GeForce GT 240 I have tested and reviewed in this article is made by InnoVISION and it sports one of the latest GPUs from Nvidia which supports some interesting technologies like Purevideo, CUDA and PhysX and it is made on the newer 40nm technology.
At first I want to thank InnoVISION for providing me the Inno3D GeForce GT 240 for testing and reviewing.
Description : The GeForce GT 240 I have tested and reviewed in this article is made by InnoVISION and it sports one of the latest GPUs from Nvidia which supports some interesting technologies like Purevideo, CUDA and PhysX and it is made on the newer 40nm technology.
About InnoVISION :
"InnoVISION Multimedia Limited is a pioneering developer and manufacturer of a diverse range of cutting-edge multimedia PC hardware products established in 1998 Hong Kong. Our manufacturing operations have been set up since 1990 in Shenzhen, China. In this short period of time we focus on manufacturing OEM/ODM products as well as contracting out extensive production and research facilities to specialist companies. We have accomplished international recognition by PC’s top reviewers as becoming an outstanding success and one of the most fast growing companies in Asia.
Our company's objective is to deliver the ultimate multimedia experience to the masses of PC users and multimedia professionals at an affordable cost. InnoVISION was then created to build brand awareness for the continuously growing product range in order to meet the fast growing market.
InnoVISION's product scope comprises the successful Inno3D brand - a comprehensive variety of 3D graphic board accelerators, the InnoDV - series of digital video/TV capture and editing products, InnoAX - high-end sound / audio cards, and EIO - advanced peripherals.
InnoVISION's ISO9001:2000 certification assures not only a world-class standard of product but also production, management and distribution efficiency. The company's talented and dedicated R&D teams both in Hong Kong and Shenzen are continually carrying out research of the highest level to design the next generation of groundbreaking products.
InnoVISION boasted a significant rate and increase in the market share of graphics card sales over the past years. To maintain InnoVISION highly respected image we will continuously focus to achieve a competitive advantage by maintaining constant product quality by continuous research and advance technical support to target customer needs.
InnoVISION will constantly grow and develop for future innovation of new and existing products. We are determined to reach beyond limits and stay focused on our company’s objectives for future prospects."
Features :
2nd Generation NVIDIA® Unified Architecture
The 240 enhanced processor cores that provide incredible shading horsepower is achieved via delivery of the second generation architecture with 50% more gaming performance over the first generation.
NVIDIA PhysX™ Ready
GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA PhysX technology - enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce. The PhysX processor is noted for being specifically designed to accelerate dynamic physical motion and interaction in games such as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW 2).
NVIDIA® Unified Architecture
Fully unified shader core dynamically allocates processing power to geometry, vertex, physics or pixel shading operations, delivering up to 2X the gaming performance of prior generation 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 and floating point accuracy at ultra-fast frame rate
16x Anti-aliasing
Lightning fast, high quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges
128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR)
Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects-now with support for anti-aliasing
NVIDIA® Quantum Effect™ Technology
Advanced shader processors architected for physics computation enable a new level of physics effects to be simulated and rendered on the GPU-all while freeing the CPU to run the game engine and AI
NVIDIA® ForceWare® unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
Delivers a proven record of compatibility, reliability and stability with the widest range of games and applications. ForceWare ensures the best out-of-box experience for every user and delivers continuous performance and feature updates over the life of NVIDIA GeForce GPUs
OpenGL® 2.0 Optimizations and Support
Ensures top-notch compatibility and performance for Open GL applications.
NVIDIA® nView Multi-Display Technology Advanced technology provides the ultimate in viewing flexible and control for multiple monitors.
PCI Express Support
Designed to run perfectly with the PCI Express bus architecture, which doubles the bandwidth of AGP 8X to deliver over 4 GB/sc in both upstream and downstream data transfer
Built for Microsoft® Windows Vista
Nvidia’s fourth-generation GPU architecture built for Windows Vista gives users the best possible experience with the Windows Aero 3D graphical user interface
NVIDIA® PureVideo™ technology
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
Specifications :
About Nvidia PhysX
Delivering physics in games is no easy task. It's an extremely compute-intensive environment based on a unique set of physics algorithms that require tremendous amounts of simultaneous mathematical and logical calculations.
This is where NVIDIA® PhysX™ Technology and GeForce® processors come in. NVIDIA PhysX is a powerful physics engine which enables real-time physics in leading edge PC and console games. PhysX software is widely adopted by over 150 games, is used by more than 10,000 registered users and is supported on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC.
In addition, PhysX is designed specifically for hardware acceleration by powerful processors with hundreds of cores. Combined with the tremendous parallel processing capability of the GPU, PhysX will provide an exponential increase in physics processing power and will take gaming to a new level delivering rich, immersive physical gaming environments with features such as:
* Explosions that cause dust and collateral debris
* Characters with complex, jointed geometries for more life-like motion and interaction
* Spectacular new weapons with incredible effects
* Cloth that drapes and tears naturally
* Dense smoke & fog that billow around objects in motion
The only way to get real physics with the scale, sophistication, fidelity and level of interactivity that dramatically alters your entertainment experience will be with one of the millions of NVIDIA PhysX-ready GeForce processors.
Here are some PhysX demos from Youtube :
Nvidia CUDA :
NVIDIA® CUDA™ is a general purpose parallel computing architecture that leverages the parallel compute engine in NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) to solve many complex computational problems in a fraction of the time required on a CPU. It includes the CUDA Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and the parallel compute engine in the GPU. To program to the CUDATM architecture, developers can, today, use C, one of the most widely used high-level programming languages, which can then be run at great performance on a CUDATM enabled processor. Other languages will be supported in the future, including FORTRAN and C++.
With over 100 million CUDA-enabled GPUs sold to date, thousands of software developers are already using the free CUDA software development tools to solve problems in a variety of professional and home applications – from video and audio processing and physics simulations, to oil and gas exploration, product design, medical imaging, and scientific research.
Technology features :
* Standard C language for parallel application development on the GPU
* Standard numerical libraries for FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines)
* Dedicated CUDA driver for computing with fast data transfer path between GPU and CPU
* CUDA driver interoperates with OpenGL and DirectX graphics drivers
* Support for Linux 32/64-bit and Windows XP 32/64-bit operating systems
The video card from InnoVISION comes in a nice colored box, with a fighter drawn on the frontal part; here we can also see that the product is guaranteed to be fully compatible with Windows 7, we can see the product name, video ram quantity, its connectors, its interface, the code name of the product and the GeForce with CUDA benefits :
On the back, we can see a product description in different languages and 3 different photos like describe, like on the GeForce 210 box, that the video card is good for gaming, video playback and supports fully the Windows 7 Aero experience :
If we get the external box out, we can find another protective one inside :
Inside the second box I could find only the video card, packed in a protective plastic anti-static bag, without any bulk; the retail cards contain the bulk which is composed from the user manual, installation CD and so on :
The GT240 PCB is very clean, it’s not crowded at all and there are no extra power connectors. The GPU cooler is large and it cools all its surroundings; the fan blades color is in complete contrast with the heatsink and on top of the fan we can find the shiny Inno3D logo :
The fan connector has 2 wires and is placed right under the heatsink :
The video ram is cooled optimally by the GPU fan, is made by Samsung and does not have extra heatsinks on it :
On the back of the video card, there are no memory chips present, but we can see some stickers with the Inno3D logo, the video card code name, its connectors name and a warranty sticker; a nVidia logo is printed on the back of the video card PCB :
Each screw that fixes the GPU heatsink has a washer, to avoid scratching the PCB and a little spring :
The output connectors of this video card are the following : HDMI, D-SUB and DVI :
Testbench :
CPU : Intel I7 920 Retail @ 3.2GHz
Motherboard : Asrock X58 Extreme
RAM : G.Skill F3-12800CL8T-6GBPI PI Series
Video : Inno3D GeForce GT 240
Power Supply : Antec True Power New 750W
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10
From the TechPowerUp GPU-Z utility, we can see some more video card information :
Here are also the video card details, picked up by Everest Ultimate Edition. Here we can also see the 2D, low power 3D and Performance 3D pre-defined frequencies :
The card performed well in most of the benchmarks and all the games I have tested are playable at 1280x1024 resolutions, without AA; with AntiAliasing, the video card has lower performance and sometimes the frames drop lower than needed to assure smooth gaming.
The card does not feature an extra power connector which is a plus and tells us of the low power consumption this card does have.
This board does also feature PhysX and CUDA, which helps in games and various other applications. Kaspersky just announced that their latest antivirus will support CUDA and virus scans will be much faster.
The only minus I see at the card is that it does not feature a SLI connector, which would have helped a lot to increase the performance by adding a second identical card. Also, software SLI is not working and this was also confirmed by Nvidia representatives. It is questionable why they took such a decision because older video cards like 8500GT support this software SLI feature ( which is SLI without the bridge ).
You may also ask yourselves why there are some results missing for this video card in the Unigine Heaven chart. That is because the benchmark was simply locking after the load screen, it was only displaying a black screen and the FPS counter, at both 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 4xAA.
I would like to thank again to InnoVISION for offering me this sample for review.