I am back with another graphics card review for you today. But unlike the usual trend here, this time it's an entry level XFX Geforce 210 512MB graphics card.
This is the first graphics chipset along with GT220 from Nvidia's stable to support DirectX10.1 and made using TSMC 40nm fabrication.
This product is based around GT218 core which is first from NVIDIA to have inbuilt audio processing engine to provide 7.1channel surround sound through onboard HDMI port.
So this clearly means it is aimed at HTPC market.
Let's not waste too much time and move straight to specifications.
The card never really ran hot. It idled in the high 30s range and peaked at 66C even with its tiny heatsink. So its all good in this department.
To test the power usage, I borrowed a APC 1KVA UPS and tested system load using Fur render. At idle the entire setup was eating just 167Watts. And under full load the system was pulling 275Watts which is not bad at all for such highly overclocked system.
My HD 4670 pulls 35Watts more at peak in the same system.
Conclusion
The Geforce 210 is not exactly regular high profile card release from Nvidia. And to be honest, even if you are a casual gamer, you will be wondering what was the point of this card.
The gaming performance is poor, it does not have any exceptional features that competition does not have. In fact HD3400 series had same features and it was released more than a year back.
An year old HD4670 will put this card to shame in gaming and similarly priced 9500GT will outperform this card. So it makes one wonder why Nvidia wanted to achieve from this?
The only logical conclusion is that they wanted to offer something which they didnt in the past. They did not have a chip which was suitable as a all in one solution for HTPC setup. All their previous cards had to rely on onboard sound solution to output sound through HDMI. This card fixed that and also eats less power than their other cards in same price range.
This can also be a test card from Nvidia to see how 40nm manufacturing pans out for them in the near future.
But at the back of the mind, I cant shake the feeling that they are too little too late to the party.
XFX Geforce 210 does make an attractive HTPC solution. It will in the end boil down to what users want in their system. If you need a low power graphics card which does fits even in low height mATX / HTPC cases without breaking bank, this does looks like an attractive solution. But if you want a card which will offer a decent gaming performance, look at other options.
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