NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M

The Nividia GeForce GT 240M is a DirectX 10.1 graphics adapter for notebooks based on the GT216 core. It is the successor of the GT 130M and technically a higher clocked GT 230M. Because of the 48 shader cores, it should perform noticeably better than the GT 130M and due to the 40nm production process the power consumption should stay the same.

The core of the GT230M is internally called GT216 and according to Nvidia based on the current high-end desktop architecture (GTX 200 series). Furthermore, Nvidia has improved the micro-architecture for further power saving and performance increases. Therefore, the performance per shader unit should be slightly improved compared to the previous generation.

As the GeForce 9700M GTS, the GT 240M features 48 stream processors that do the work of the former dedicated pixel- and vertex-shaders. The unified shaders of Nvidia are 1-dimensional (AMD has 5-dimensional shaders which leads to the higher number of shaders).

The GeForce GT240M also supports CUDA, DirectX Compute, OpenCL, and PhysiX to use the shaders for other tasks than rendering images (like encoding videos, calculating the physics of a game or mathematical tasks). For these special tasks, the GPU can be noticeably faster than current CPUs.

The mobile graphics card has a built in video decoder called PureVideo HD with VP4. The Video Processor 4 (VP4) supports the full decoding of H.264, VC-1, and now also MPEG-4 ASP (e.g. DivX or XviD). MPEG-1 still wont be supported, but the decoding of this codec is quite trivial on a CPU.

In conjunction with a chipset from Nvidia with integrated graphics (e.g. 9400M), the GT 240M supports Hybrid-SLI (HybridPower and GeForceBoost). HybridPower is a technique to choose between the integrated and dedicated graphics core, if performance or battery runtime is needed. This works only in Windows Vista (and possibly Windows 7). Up to now the user has to use a tool to switch between the GPUs. Later Nvidia wants to switch automatically in the drivers. GeForceBoost is not supported by the GT 240M because the SLI combination would not perform better.

The performance of the middle class gpu GT 240M should be somewhere between the GeForce GT130M and the 9700M GTS and above the GT 230M because of the lower clock rate. Demanding DirectX 10 games like Crysis should run fluently in medium details. Older or less demanding games should run in high detail settings and high resolutions.

Depending on the the used type of graphics memory (GDDR2, GDDR3 or perhaps even DDR2/DDR3) the performance may differ noticeably.

The power consumption of the mobile graphics card is - like the GT 130M and GT 230M - 23 Watt (TDP). Furthermore, according to Nvidia, the new improved core does only need half of the power in Idle mode.

Manufacturer	NVIDIA
Series	GeForce GT 200M
Codename	N10P-GS
Pipelines	48 - unified
Core Speed *	550 MHz
Shader Speed *	1210 MHz
Memory Speed *	800 MHz
Memory Bus Width	128 Bit
Memory Type	DDR3, GDDR2, GDDR3
Max. Amount of Memory	1024 MB
Shared Memory	no
DirectX	DirectX 10.1, Shader 4.1
Current Consumption	23 Watt
technology	40 nm
Features	DirectX Compute Support (Windows 7), CUDA, OpenCL, HybridPower, PhysX
Notebook Size	medium sized
Date of Announcement	15.06.2009
Information	174 Gigaflops
Link to Manufacturer Page	http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_gef...

* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.

benchmarks

3DMark 2001: - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 21243, avg: 23708, max: 28631 Points ... More Details

3DMark 03: - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 18038, avg: 18262, max: 18657 Points ... More Details

3DMark 05: - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
min: 11275, avg: 11811, max: 13004 Points ... More Details

3DMark 06:
0% 100%
min: 5857, avg: 6504, max: 7367 Points ... More Details

Cinebench R10: - Shading
0% 100%
min: 2922, avg: 3509, max: 4435 Points ... More Details

3DMark Vantage: - P Result no PhysX 1280x1024
0% 100%
min: 2348, avg: 2429, max: 2624 Points ... More Details

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card

- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
Based on 59 benchmarks

3DMark 05 in comparison
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 500 (min)	137
...
NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT	11355
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700M	11550
NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS	11777
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M	11811
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M	12507
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650	12609
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670	12614
...
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M SLI (max)	19268

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010): Not playable with a weaker graphics card. - more...