NVIDIA Launches Fermi Based GeForce GT 610, GT 620, GT 630 Into Retail
by Ryan Smith on May 19, 2012 8:00 PM ESTWhile we were off at NVIDIA’s GTC 2012 conference seeing NVIDIA’s latest professional products, NVIDIA’s GeForce group was busy with some launches of their own. The company has quietly launched the GeForce GT 610, GT 620, and GT 630 into the retail market. Unfortunately these are not the Kepler GeForce cards you were probably looking for.
| GT 630 GDDR5 | GT 630 DDR3 | GT 620 | GT 610 | |
| Previous Model Number | GT 440 GDDR5 | GT 440 DDR3 | N/A | GT 520 |
| Stream Processors | 96 | 96 | 96 | 48 |
| Texture Units | 16 | 16 | 16 | 8 |
| ROPs | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Core Clock | 810MHz | 810MHz | 700MHz | 810MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1620MHz | 1620MHz | 1400MHz | 1620MHz |
| Memory Clock | 3.2GHz GDDR5 | 1.8GHz DDR3 | 1.8GHz DDR3 | 1.8GHz DDR3 |
| Memory Bus Width | 128-bit | 128-bit | 64-bit | 64-bit |
| Frame Buffer | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| GPU | GF108 | GF108 | GF108/GF117? | GF119 |
| TDP | 65W | 65W | 49W | 29W |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm |
As NVIDIA was already reusing Fermi GPUs for GeForce 600 series parts for the OEM laptop and desktop market, it was only a matter of time until this came over to the retail market, and that’s exactly what has happened. The GT 610, GT 620, and GT 630 are all based on Fermi GPUs, and in fact 2 of them are straight-up rebadges of existing GeForce 400 and 500 series cards. Worse, they’re not even consistent with their OEM counterparts – the OEM GT 620 and GT 630 are based off of different chips and specs entirely.
At the bottom of the 600 series retail stack is the GeForce GT 610, which is a rebadge of the GT 520. This means it’s either a GF119 GPU or cut-down GF108 GPU featuring a meager 48 CUDA Cores and a 64bit memory bus, albeit with a low 29W TDP as a result. This is truly a rock bottom card meant to be a cheap as possible upgrade for older computers, as even an Ivy Bridge HD4000 iGPU should be able to handily surpass it.
The second card is the GT 620, which is a variant of the OEM-only GT 530. With 96 CUDA cores we’re not 100% sure that this is GF108 as opposed to the 28nm GK117, but as NVIDIA currently has a 28nm capacity bottleneck we can’t see them placing valuable 28nm chips in low-end retail cards. Furthermore the 49W TDP perfectly matches the GF108 based GT 530. Compared to the OEM GT 620 the retail model has twice as many CUDA cores, so it has twice as much shader performance on paper, but because of the 64bit memory bus it’s going to be significantly memory bandwidth starved.
The final new 600 series card is the GT 630, which is a rebadge of the GT 440. Like the GT 440 this card comes in two variants, a model with DDR3 and a model with GDDR5. Both models are based on GF108 and have all 96 CUDA cores enabled, and have the same core clock of 810MHz. At the same time this is going to be the card that deviates from its OEM counterpart the most. The OEM GT 630 was a Kepler GK107 card, so this rules out getting a Kepler based GT 630 retail card any time in the near future.
As always, rebadging doesn’t suddenly make a good card bad – or vice versa – but it’s disappointing to once again see this mess transition over to the retail market. We hold to our belief that previous generation products are perfectly acceptable as they were, and that the desire to have yearly product numbers in an industry that is approaching 2 year product cycles is silly at its best, and confusing at its worst.
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UltraTech79 - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
10s of millions. Again, you're delusional.sucram03 - Saturday, May 19, 2012 - link
And yet all of the pictures I've seen thus far (including the ones I saw at Zotac's website last night) all seem to depict cards with fans.I just can't imagine the TDP to be *that* much that we have yet to see more than one OEM produce a fanless version of the 440. And even then, just looking at Newegg, it's only ASUS that makes it, and it's only a DDR3 variant.
Here's hoping and waiting for a respectable CUDA card for my HTPC. Thankfully my fanless GT430 has held up well enough for decoding and there hasn't been any reason to upgrade yet.
I haven't explored aftermarket VGA coolers for a number of years, so I'm unsure if there's one that fits the bill.
Taft12 - Friday, May 25, 2012 - link
Low profile with a tiny fan is cheaper and will fit into Dell, HP, Acer, etc slim cases than a big passive cooler.The last thing Zotac and EVGA want is customers returning vid cards because a mostly clueless customer bought a card at Tiger Direct won't fit in their small Dell PC case.
I don't like it either, but it's the way it has to be.
Patflute - Saturday, May 19, 2012 - link
No gaming charts? : (Anyone know when the 660 and 660ti are coming out?
Will the 660ti be $199? Would fast will the 650ti be, would it be better than the 7770?
Skott - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
I'm curious when the Ti models are coming out as well.Roland00Address - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
So that is what 14.4 GB/s (64 bit / 8 * 1800) for the memoryA Llano/Trinity processor in dual channel has
21.3GB/s with 1333mhz memory,
25.6 GB/s with 1600mhz memory,
29.8 GB/s with 1866mhz memory.
A tegra 3 cellphone/tablet cpu+gpu can have up to 6.0 GB/s (32 bit/8*1500) which is 41.6% of these gpus. And even tegra 3 is bandwidth starved.
An Ipad 3 cpu+gpu (dual core cortex A9+A5x graphics) has 12.8 GB/s (4 memory controllers*32 bit/8*800) which is 88.8% of the memory bandwidth.
It is going to be sad in the near future when a cell phone cpu will have better graphics than a current new model nvidia graphic card.
Orwell - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
Heck, even an old 9600GT has 68GiB/s (256/8 * 1090 * 2) of bandwidth.At least pick a decent old card to compare with then! ;)
Oh, and yes, partially thanks to consoles this card can still play nearly any game at high detail, given you disable AA and stick with 1680x1050 or so. Also, they can be had for as little as €40 so its probably cheaper that these three new chips. Moreover, they don't need to be oven baked.
Stuka87 - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
Well not any game, but a good deal yes.These cards are not going to play something like BF3 at high detail at 1680x1050. They would struggle at low-medium detail settings at that resolution.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 26, 2012 - link
Maybe the amd fans would agree that the Dx11 upgrade cheapos surpass the sad integrated pre AM3 and socket 775 loser chips, and give the cu$tomer a gigantic bang for their buck ?I mean you should see how happy and proud they are they fled the amd X200, X1250, X2100 integrated and cranked their aging system to the DX11 sky for a cheap $35 bucks and a tech notch on their belt.
Of course all the brilliant would be honest underdog CEO's and BSA Market Analysts here have a different story to tell about how stupid the purchasing public is - not necessarily a PR win if their words got out.
Maybe the rage3d fans should think about all the crappy Intel integrated boards these low cost DX11 cards beat by 500% ?
Maybe those buying them aren't so dumb after all - and INSTEAD the usual cheap moaning penny pinching I can't afford a three cent snot bubble upgraders of amd fan persuasion we have here are the clueless and completely thoughtless going against their usual pennies from the peanut butter jar price/perf scrapingly poor "enthusiast" menschen upgrade mind spew.
yannigr - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
For $40 / 30€ they are not bad. For old PCs without graphics I mean. For new PCs with ultra cheap graphics the right way is Llano/Trinity/...Intel.