NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 Roundup (EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Sparkle)

Conclusions

MSI GT 240 OC Edition

MSI’s GT 240 proved to be a breath of fresh air throughout testing simply because it combines the best of every world into a product that deserves a place at the head of this roundup. It won’t wow anyone with its overall speed simply because its clocks are identical to those of the EVGA Superclocked version but it can overclock quite well when compared to other cards in this roundup. However, your results may vary when it comes to overclocking though.

We know some people will likely decry the use of a dual slot cooler and its accompanying backplate but at least we get some extremely good temperatures and a low acoustical profile out of it. The only real issue we have with this card is its availability here in Canada but south of the border, things look a bit better. With a near-perfect combination of performance, cooling prowess and near-silence, the MSI GT 240 OC Edition receives our Dam Good Award.




Sparkle GT 240 512MB

Much like the Gigabyte GT 240 512MB, Sparkle’s card is nothing more than a references design with one lone difference: a custom heatsink. This heatsink works quite well considering its diminutive size and operates at surprisingly low decibel levels. Performance is about what you would expect but overclocking with this card is poor to say the least.

As we said throughout the review, Sparkle is anything but a household name among North American gamers but they are working hard to make inroads into this market. With the addition of some highly custom GT 240 designs which were released too late to be included in this roundup, it looks like they are well on their way. However, we would advise expanding their distributor network as their cards are still a bit hard to find.



Sparkle GT 240 1GB

What can we say? This is unfortunately the least appealing of the cards we tested for this roundup simply because of the inherent poor performance of the 1GB GT 240 cards coupled with their needlessly high pricing. Sparkle does make this card slightly more palatable with the inclusion of a reasonably good single slot heatsink but when push comes to shove, that’s the only thing it has going for it.

It’s not all doom and gloom though since we’ve seen this card retailing for substantially less than its current $110 CAD price tag. If you can find it for less than the 512MB version’s $94.99 price tag, it could become a perfectly acceptable purchase.