While most of us have been awaiting the next generation GTX300 series cards from nVidia, various internet reports claim the company has been quietly releasing updates to many of their classic series of cards. That brings us to the rumoured GT240 which has been expected to replace the vaunted yet still widely used 9600 cards.

Based upon the GT215, a variant of the GT200 series chipset. These newest incarnations from nVidia promise to be less power hungry and cooler than the older cards they are slated to replace, more so when you consider the use of 40nm fabrication technology.

Keeping with the same basic layout, the GT240 will feature 96 shaders that are said to run at a clock frequency of 1340MHz. Core clock is slated to be a modest 550MHz as well.

Another major change beyond the 40nm die size is the move from GDDR2 RAM (featured on the 9600) to GDDR3 instead. Additionally, a leak from Fudzilla claims that certain manufacturer’s will be producing a GDDR5 variant.  This should help with the overall memory clocks of the card, and promises it to be faster than their previous  generation with unconfirmed speeds of 1800MHz. With either 512 or 1GB of onboard memory, working off of a 128-bit bus the GT240 does promise to be an honest replacement vs the typical re-brand we are used to seeing.

Naturally PhysX support is standard, along with DirectX 10.1 compatibility. This will help plant the latest GT firmly in the mid-range market catering to both those with budget systems and those who want a dedicated physX card in their machine.

Pricing and availability are not yet known, but it should be safe to say they will fall somewhere in the $80-100 CAD range once released.