Coming up hot on the heels of last week’s Radeon HD 6450 launch, today NVIDIA quietly launched the GT 520, their low-end video card for the 500 series. It’s based on GF119, a GF11x GPU with no immediate analogue from GF10x series, but has already been shipping in mobile products as the GeForce GT 410M and 520M. In NVIDIA’s existing desktop lineup, it should replace the GeForce GT 220.
| GTS 450 | GT 430 | GT 520 | GT 220 (DDR3) | |
| Stream Processors | 192 | 96 | 48 | 48 |
| Texture Address / Filtering | 32/32 | 16/16 | 8/8 | 16/16 |
| ROPs | 16 | 4 | 4 | 8 |
| Core Clock | 783MHz | 700MHz | 810MHz | 625MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1566MHz | 1400MHz | 1620MHz | 1360MHz |
| Memory Clock | 902MHz (3.608GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 900MHz (1.8GHz data rate) DDR3 | 900MHz (1.8GHz data rate) DDR3 | 900MHz (1.8GHz data rate) DDR3 |
| Memory Bus Width | 128-bit | 128-bit | 64-bit | 128-bit |
| VRAM | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| FP64 | 1/12 FP32 | 1/12 FP32 | 1/12 FP32 | N/A |
| Transistor Count | 1.17B | 585M | N/A | 505M |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm |
| Price Point | $99 | ~$70 | ~$60 | ~$60 |
GF119
GF119 is largely half of a GF108 GPU, and in the process appears to be the smallest configuration possible for Fermi. In terms of functional units a single SM is attached to a single GPC, which in turn is attached to a single block of 4 ROPs and a single 64bit memory controller. Not counting the differences in clockspeeds, compared to GF108 a GF119 GPU should be half as fast in shading and geometry performance, while in any situations where the two are ROP-bound the performance drop-off should be limited to the impact of lost memory bandwidth. Speaking of which, as with GF108, GF119 is normally paired with DDR3, so with half as wide a memory bus memory bandwidth should be halved as well.
For the GT 520, the nominal clocks are 810MHz for the core and 900MHz (1.8GHz data rate) for the DDR3 memory. As with other low-end products, we wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see core clock speeds vary some. All of the cards launching today are shipping with 1GB of DDR3. And while we don’t have a card in-house to test, based on the performance of the GT 430 we’d expect performance to match if not slightly lag the Radeon HD 6450. Power consumption should also be similar; NVIDIA gives the GT 520 a TDP of 29W, while we’d expect the idle TDP to be around 10W.
The GT 520 is shipping immediately both in retail and to OEMs; as with other low-end products the focus is on OEM sales with retail as a side-channel. NVIDIA is not providing a MSRP for the card, but we’re seeing prices start at $60. It goes without saying that performance is most certainly going to lag similarly priced cards, primarily the GT 430 which can be found for almost as cheap after rebate.
| April 2011 Video Card MSRPs | ||
| NVIDIA | Price | AMD |
| $700 | Radeon HD 6990 | |
| $480 | ||
| $320 | Radeon HD 6970 | |
| $260 | Radeon HD 6950 2GB | |
| $240 | Radeon HD 6950 1GB | |
| $200 | Radeon HD 6870 | |
| $160 | Radeon HD 6850 | |
| $150 | Radeon HD 6790 | |
| $130 | ||
| $110 | Radeon HD 5770 | |
| $50-$70 | Radeon HD 5570 | |
| $55-$60 | Radeon HD 6450 | |
| $30-$50 | Radeon HD 5450 | |
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HangFire - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
No, it doesn't surprise me that AnandTech doesn't understand what It professionals need.Engineers often have modest but definite needs for OpenGL or 3D compliance, as do their managers, often just to use product viewers to see the design. Huge gaming cards or high-end CAD qualified cards are mostly unnecessary, except maybe for one or two designer's workstations, but simply to view their work on standard IT system, a 3D qualified card is needed- and that doesn't mean Intel built-in graphics.
http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/divis...
"OpenGL Graphics Card is required on the Graphics Server for thumbnail generation and thin/java client support."
http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/features/system...
"To use Mathematica 8's built-in GPU computing capabilities, you'll need a graphics card that supports OpenCL or CUDA, such as many cards from NVIDIA, AMD, and others."
http://www.goldensoftware.com/products/voxler/voxl...
"Video driver with openGL acceleration, highly recommended"
synaesthetic - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
Engineers != IT professionals.Bunch of guys networking machines together for bean counters who run Excel all day don't need anything beyond an IGP.
HangFire - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
Wow, that's a flash of insight.In the many places I have worked, our IT professionals provide and service the computer systems of engineers, managers, and buyers, all of whom may use software that requires some basic 3D capabilities.
dendysutrisna - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
I do not agree to say that this Nvidia GeForce GT 520M had a very bad performance. At least with the price range $55 - $60 you can get the visual results that very, very adequate. Other hand if you are an enthusiastic gamer ... you should look for graphics cards with price range of $250 upwards. By the way is true at the top I do not find review of this GT 520M?? But I have tried one NoteBook products that harness the power of this graphics card, look at its review at http://www.bestdealscomputers.net/netbooks/asus-u3... There are also some games (high demanding) that can be played with this graphics card, yeah there is some resolution settings and its frames / second. But simply, that much okay with a price range you can reasonably do many things.dgingeri - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
so, in essence, we're getting half the ROPs and half the memory bandwidth, but a slight bump in speed, for the same price? sounds like screwing over their customers to me.andyfoo - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
From the look of it, it looks like this might be a low-profile GPU, anyone able to confirm? My friend would like to get a newer card (he's running an ATI 5570) but we're not sure what the options are for newer cards.MrSpadge - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
It's certainly much slower than your friends HD5570 (400 stream processors). Generally there are not many low profile cards around. I don't know of any which would be faster than the HD5570.And generally it's not a good idea to want a "new" card. You should want a better one ;) Given that the HD5570 is already 40 nm and the best current ones are also 40 nm, you can't expect much of an improvement given the same style of card. You'd have to move up to larger and more power hungry cards to get something faster.
MrS
marc1000 - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
I believe the 5570 is really the fastest you can go with low-profile / no external power.your friend wants to wait for 28nm, in reality.
Guspaz - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
The real question is, how does it compare to SNB's onboard graphics?marc1000 - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
roughly the double? it is aprox. what we have with the 6450.