ZOTAC GeForce GT 640 Review

It’s no real secret that the mainstream and entry-level segment in graphics card has always belonged to AMD, since a really long time. I don’t know what it is, but Nvidia just couldn’t seem to deliver on the either performance or features, which is why AMD cards have always offered better value. That could soon be a thing of the past, though as they’ve now launched their highly anticipated mainstream GPU based on the Kepler architecture. The GT 640 first made its debut as an OEM only card and now Nvidia has finally released it for the retail market as well. We have ZOTAC’s offering of the GT 640, which follows along the same lines as Nvidia’s reference design. Let's see if Nvidia have finally managed to make a mainstream card that we can be proud of.

Small footprint

Design and Build
The ZOTAC GT 640 comes packaged in a compact box, which gives you a hint of how small the card actually is. The card and all the accessories are snugly packed in bubble wrap inside. The GT 640 looks like a typical HTPC card - puny! The small size and light-weight make it easier to to fit even in small cases. There reference design only has the heatsink covering the core, but ZOTAC has used a wider aluminium heatsink that even covers the RAM chips. The card could have been passively cooled, but ZOTAC have installed a tiny orange fan to disperse the heat better. The card is incredibly short as well and ends just after the PCIE slot.

Nvidia Surround ready!

Nvidia haven’t neutered the card too much and the GT 640 supports Nvidia Surround for up to four monitors. The ZOTAC card, however supports three due to the three display ports at the back. This is still a first for a mainstream Nvidia card, which is a big deal. ZOTAC has chosen a DVI-I, DVI-D and a miniHDMI port. They don’t bundle the adapter though, just a DVI to VGA adapter. Other contents in the box include an installation manual and a driver and utility disk. ZOTAC also throws in their Boost GPU tweaking program.

Small and compact

There’s no need for a extra PCIE power connector, since the GT 640 draws all of its power from the PCIE slot and since it doesn’t exceed 75W, there’s no need for one. Nvidia say the maximum power draw of the card on load is 65W, which means you can easily run this on any run of the mill PSU, though a good one is always recommended.

Features
ZOTAC has stuck with the reference specifications as well from Nvidia and we have a core clock speed of 900MHz. Nvidia hasn’t skimped much on the cores as well and we have a total of 384 CUDA cores, which is lot if you look at their previous generation offerings. The card also comes with 2GB of GDDR3 memory clocked at an effective speed of 1800MHz. This much memory seems a bit of an overkill of regular use, but we guess the extra frame buffer will come in handy when you use it with multiple monitors. It’s a wonder why Nvidia didn’t do with faster GDDR5 memory?

Perfect for HTPC use and gaming too!

Since this card is based on the GK107 core, you get most of the features of Kepler, but understandably, not all of them. For instance, GPU Boost is absent and so is TXAA. You do get the Adaptive V-Sync feature, which basically automatically toggles V-Sync on or off depending on the current framerate of the game. You can now have a multiple monitor set-up from just one card, something Nvidia has always lost out to AMD in the past with their Eyefinity tech. It also supports Blu-ray 3D and 3DVision. Other features include OpenGL 4.2, DX11, PCIE 3.0 and support for a maximum resolution of 3840 x 2160. Overall, the GT 640 seems like a very potent card on paper, even though it may not look the part in reality.