Gigabyte - GV N220OC-1GI review

In recent months Nvidia has busily padding out its

In recent months Nvidia has busily padding out its GeForce 200 series of desktop graphics cards. There are three new additions to the product range in the shape of GeForce 210, GeForce GT 220 and GeForce 240 that seem to complete the job, as the prices start at £30 for a GeForce 210 and head up to £400 for a dual-chip GeForce GTX 295.

GeForce GTX 260, 275, 285 and 295 are all based on the humungous GT200 chip with a startling 1.4 billion transistors per chip or 2.8 billion in the dual-chipped GTX 295. These high-end chips have 240 unified shaders or stream processors but we have not yet seen a mid-range or budget chip based on GT200.

You might think that the GeForce GTS 250 is a close relative of the GTX 260 but it actually derives from the G92 chip with a die shrink from 65nm to 55nm, so it is really an update of GeForce GTX 9800+ which in turn was based on GeForce 8800 GTS.

With that information in your back pocket you may wonder about the provenance of the GeForce GT 220 chip that sits at the heart of the Gigabyte GV N220OC-1GI.

GeForce GT 220 sits near the bottom of the Nvidia GeForce product range and some digging reveals that this seemingly new chip is a 40nm die shrink of the G98 chip that we have previously seen in the GeForce 9600 GSO and before that in the 8800 GSO.

Nvidia has given the chip a significant overhaul that starts with the 40nm die shrink which should reduce power consumption and the output of heat. The finned aluminium cooler on the Gigabyte has a translucent plastic housing clipped on the top that accommodates a 80mm fan that is very quiet. The cooler isn't especially tall but that's the impression you get as the card is incredibly short at a mere 170mm.

Other new features in the GT 220 are support for DirectX 10.1, rather than DirectX 10.0, and an HDMI output compliant with v1.3a that supports audio so you don't need a separate cable. The GT 220 card also has a VGA port and a DVI output.

A basic GT 220 has a core speed of 625MHz which is slightly faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO, however this OC Gigabyte is overclocked to 720MHz. Added to that you have 1GB of DDR3 memory running at 1,600MHz so on the face of it things look promising.

The problem is that the 48 shaders don't provide enough graphics power to play the DirectX 10.1 games that the Gigabyte supports. The telling figure is the 3DMark Vantage Overall score of 3,399 marks that we saw on our Core i7 test PC. This is a fearsomely powerful PC and the GPU score is a mere 2,620 marks which is less than half the score you will get from a Radeon HD 5750. We consider that the HD 5750 is marginal on gaming performance.

Those 3DMark scores translate to a frame rate of less than 20fps in Far Cry 2 at Full HD settings and in BattleForge the frame rate drops below 10fps.

That's simply not good enough for gaming but if you look at the combination of features and price you may well consider the Gigabyte has a place in a PC somewhere in your household.