nVidia's GT 640 (GK107) reviewed (Tom's)

[3DVagabond]

Tom's Hardware

Well, not high end, but it's 28nm and Kepler. :thumbsup:

 

[Jaydip]

Actually u are better off buying a gtx 460 or radeon 6850.

 

[lopri]

Well considering this news article:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5881/amd-announces-a-new-900mhz-radeon-hd-7750

NV is obviously saving GDDR5 equipped GK107 for later. Once GK107 acquires GDDR5 it should perform as well as (or better than?) Cape Verde. Another evidence that GK104 was meant for mid-range originally but NV ended up hitting a jackpot with Kepler architecture at the same time AMD is paying for GPGPU-tax with its Southern Islands architecture.

 

[Vesku]

Even GDDR5 won't make this card a very good value, seeing as the DDR3 version is at 7750 prices.

 

[nenforcer]

Yeah, it performs decently considering it still has DDR3, but not for the price point they are targeting. I'd only consider a GDDR5 version at those prices.

The thing looks like its going to get beat or at best tied with a Trinity APU.

 

[laputan machine]

At least it's available in low profile. Still waiting for the 7750 to be that If only this was a little bit more powerful.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

At least it's available in low profile. Still waiting for the 7750 to be that If only this was a little bit more powerful.

Forgot about low profile cards.
Hopefully more powerful ones will come out.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Tom's Hardware

Well, not high end, but it's 28nm and Kepler. :thumbsup:

Thanks for that. Looking to upgrade one of my boxes but I need at least 7750 performance. Who is going to buy this K at that price?

 

[AtenRa]

Heh, 28nm continues to be overpriced. We have to wait for next year

 

[boxleitnerb]

Disappointing. I thought GK104 could fight Tahiti, GK106 Pitcairn and GK107 Cape Verde.

 

[KompuKare]

1.3 billion transistors 'wasted'. That is the performance with DDR3 is just silly here unless Nvidia have too many of these chips on their hands.

Anyone willing to speculate where a GDDR5 version would perform vs the Cape Verde (not that Cape Verde is a great performer anyhow - the Cape Verde Compute Tax is probably the highest of any Southern Islands chip)?

From the THG chart, the DDR3 version of the 6670 has almost the same bandwidth so maybe the 6670 DDR3 vs GDDR5 is an indication although GK107 might be more bandwith starved.

16W idle is poor though vs the 7750 at 12W. Especially for low end cards which now have to compete with the frugal idles of APUs. Obviously there's only so far a card can go when idling since it has to have power circuitry but if low-end cards want to compete with HD4000 and Trinity they have to come up with some new thinking for idle loads. Maybe onchip framebuffer together with a SOC-like GPU which can only handle 2D / Aero.

 

[Olikan]

Disappointing. I thought GK104 could fight Tahiti, GK106 Pitcairn and GK107 Cape Verde.

they will have to use a harvested GK 106 to beat a 1.1Ghz cape verde

 

[HurleyBird]

Pretty poor showing. Hopefully it's just bandwidth starved, but then why release the GDDR3 version at all?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Well at least this might signal a $200-$250 nvidia card soon hopefully it performs reasonably well. I'm on the fence about a 7850 I've really enjoyed by nvidia card.

 

[Ketchup]

A bit disappointing, but I think that's because I am really waiting for the GTX 660.

 

[AtenRa]

Anyone willing to speculate where a GDDR5 version would perform vs the Cape Verde (not that Cape Verde is a great performer anyhow

I will say close to GTS450 performance.

 

[blckgrffn]

Here's to hoping you can GTS 450 GPU compute throughput @ ~60% of the power utilization and a slightly lower price. For that it seems reasonable, although I would obviously like to see it be as cheap as possible as well.

If it is the GTS 430/440 replacement, then it is doing its job.

 

[exar333]

The card would be good at a $70 price point; $100 is way too much with the 7750 just above that. You can usually snag the 7750 with a MIR or sale for just above $100 right now. No way someone chooses to buy this for $5 less.

I see these as more likely to show up as OEM cards in default builds where the buyer can choose to upgrade higher. The OEM is likely buying them for a lot less than $100.

 

[exar333]

Pretty poor showing. Hopefully it's just bandwidth starved, but then why release the GDDR3 version at all?

It would have been nice to have a DDR3 and DDR5 version. DDR3-only in these days is pretty silly.

 

[ShintaiDK]

GDDR5 uses alot more power. And it could potentially have made the card need PCIe power.

But I am also sure we will see GDDR5 versions sooner or later.

 

[tviceman]

GDDR3 just sucks. As you can see in the power draw graphs, there is still 20 watts of power to work with before equaling the hd7750's power draw. Switching over to GDDR5 would not take 20 more watts. So really, why is this card even being released? They should have slapped GDDR5 memory on it, clocked the chip a little bit higher, and at least equaled the hd7750 in performance without consuming more power.

 

[exar333]

GDDR5 uses alot more power. And it could potentially have made the card need PCIe power.

But I am also sure we will see GDDR5 versions sooner or later.

They have about 10w more and still be within spec for the PCIe slot. They could have dropped clocks by 50-75mhz and likely hit that 75w max draw. The cool thing about this is that AIBs could then take the reference board and clock it higher, if the choose, and add a 6-pin power plug. They could also add more memory, or faster memory as well.

If you look at the AMD difference between DDR3 and DDR5, its about 15w. I would think that would be reasonable for NV as well.

 

[SunnyD]

So what, this card should be available for about $50 after rebate, right? :|

 

[Silverforce11]

Some of the comments here...

I just looked at the BF3 results where NV usually do much better and i had to LOL.

It's a PoS.