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

The Specifications of our GT 240 Pile

According to NVIDIA, the GT 240 will be replacing the 9600 GT in their lineup and it is easy to see how the two cards line up to one another. The first thing that is quite obvious is that there are a number of differences between the two cards with the 9600 GT having higher core clocks and more ROPs than the new 40nm contender. Even though the 9600 GT has less SPs, its higher core clock directly translates into much higher engine / shader speeds which could more than make up for the difference. Meanwhile, the 128-bit memory interface on the GT 240 probably won’t translate into much of a bottleneck for the GDDR5-equipped version but there is no doubt that the GDDR3 products could run into a substantial memory bottleneck.

So what does all of this mean for the GT 240 GDDR5 against the outgoing 9600 GT? In our opinion, the cards will be nearly identical in framerate performance but the 9600 GT could have the edge in situations where engine speeds and ROP performance are paramount. As for the GT 240 1GB GDDR3, it is priced quite a bit lower than the GDDR5 version so we can only assume that a potential memory bottleneck can and will lead to a large gap in performance.


Cards like the Gigabyte 512MB and the Sparkle products we have are all clocked at reference speeds so there probably won’t be too much excitement out of them unless we are talking about the custom cooling solutions being bandied about.

The EVGA GT 240 Superclocked might carry a name that promises sky-high clock speeds but the reality is a bit sad since all we see is a 100Mhz (200Mhz QDR) increase for the GDDR5 memory. Core and shader clocks stay at reference speeds. MSI is in the same boat with memory operating at 3600Mhz QDR stacked up next to otherwise boring core and shader clocks. The Gigabyte GT 240 1GB adds an interesting counterpoint to the chart since it is the only card that makes use of an overclocked core and shader domain even though it is hooked up to slower GDDR3 memory. Also of note is that Gigabyte doesn’t considering this their “Overclocked” model even though the core speed has a 50Mhz bump over a reference card.

If this lineup looks a bit boring to you, we agree wholeheartedly. The fact of the matter is the core on the GT 240 just can’t be overclocked well when compared to past NVIDIA cards and this directly translates into reference-speed cards littering the market at every turn. Sparkle did just announce pending availability of their X240 and X240G cards that will push the core to 630Mhz but initial indications are that additional voltage was needed to achieve that speed. In addition, it looks like the X240 series will not see widespread release here in North America.

One other thing we should mention here is the NVIDIA reference specs for the GT 240 1GB GDDR3 mention memory clock speeds of 2000Mhz DDR. From what we have seen, NOT ONE of their board partners have implemented this into their boards which is a huge disappointment considering we are sure 400Mhz more would have made this lower-end card into one hell of a contender.