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NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M

The Nvidia GeForce GT 330M is the successor of the GT 230M and technically a faster clocked GT 240M (but it should still maintain the power envelope of the GT 230M as the naming suggests). Therefore, the GT330M is a mid-range laptop graphics card that offers DirectX 10.1 effects.

The performance of the GT 330M is similar to the GeForce GT 240M and therefore located in the range of the Mobility Radeon HD 4650. The card supports DirectX 10.1 and all the features of the GT 230M / 240M (as it is based on the same GT216 core). The modern ATI Radeon HD 5650 offers DirectX 11 effects and performs better. 

Modern and demanding DirectX 10 and 11 games (like Crysis or Risen) can only be played fluently with medium detail settings and resolution settings. Less demanding games like Sims 3 run in high details and resolutions. See the gaming list below for detailed benchmarks.

The 48 shader cores of the GT216 are based on the desktop GTX 200 architecture and are therefore a bit improved compared to the 48 cores of the GeForce 9700M GTX. According to Nvidia, the micro architecture was improved regarding battery runtime and performance. The stream processors / shaders are 1-dimensional (1D) and can therefore not directly compared to the 5D shaders of current AMD / ATI cards like the Mobility Radeon HD 5650.

To use the calculation performance of the GeForce GT 330M for other applications, the card supports CUDA, OpenCL, and Direct Compute. For example encoding videos using the stream processors is considerably faster than using a fast CPU.

The GT330M supports the hardware decoding of HD videos using the integrated PureVideo HD engine. The integrated VP4 video processor is able to fully decode H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 ASP (e.g., DivX, xVID). Hardware decoding of MPEG-1 encoded videos is not supported, but this can be handled by every CPU without high load. In conjunction with an Core i5-520M, the GT 330M decoded H.264 with 1-6%, VC1 in 5-10%, and WMV with 3-9% CPU load (1080p over HDMI on a Sony Vaio Z11). 

 

As with the GT 230M, the performance depends on the used graphics memory. With slow DDR2, the card can be up to 20% slower than with faster memory. Usually the GT 330M is paired with cheap and relatively fast DDR3 memory. GDDR3 would be a bit faster. GDDR5 is not supported according to Nvidia.

A low power version of the GT 330M is also available for laptop manufacturers featuring a minimal slower clock rate and less power consumption (Codename N11P-LP).

GeForce GT 300M Series

GeForce GT 335M compare 72 @ 0.45 GHz128 Bit @ 1066 MHz
GeForce GT 330M 48 @ 0.58 GHz128 Bit @ 1066 MHz
GeForce GT 325M compare 48 @ 0.45 GHz128 Bit @ 1066 MHz
GeForce GT 320M compare 24 @ 0.5 GHz128 Bit @ 790 MHz
CodenameN11P-GE1
ArchitectureGT2xx
Pipelines48 - unified
Core Speed575 MHz
Shader Speed1265 MHz
Memory Speed1066 MHz
Memory Bus Width128 Bit
Memory TypeGDDR2, GDDR3, DDR3
Max. Amount of Memory1024 MB
Shared Memoryno
APIDirectX 10.1, Shader 4.1
Transistor Count486 Million
technology40 nm
FeaturesDirectX Compute Support (Windows 7), CUDA, OpenCL, HybridPower, PhysX
Notebook Sizemedium sized
Date of Announcement10.01.2010
Information182 Gigaflops calculation power
Link to Manufacturer Pagewww.nvidia.com

Benchmarks

3DMark Vantage
3DM Vant. Perf. total +
3DMark Vantage - 3DM Vant. Perf. total
min: 2159     avg: 2496     median: 2657.5 (1%)     max: 2800 Points
3DM Vant. Perf. GPU no PhysX +
3DMark Vantage - 3DM Vant. Perf. GPU no PhysX
min: 1738     avg: 2039     median: 2134 (1%)     max: 2244 Points
3DMark 2001SE - 3DMark 2001 - Standard
min: 21859     avg: 26741     median: 26029.5 (27%)     max: 32183 Points
3DMark 03 - 3DMark 03 - Standard
min: 16182     avg: 18198     median: 18934 (10%)     max: 19604 Points
3DMark 05 - 3DMark 05 - Standard
min: 11076     avg: 12591     median: 12982.5 (14%)     max: 13457 Points
3DMark 06 3DMark 06 - Score Unknown Settings +
3DMark 06
min: 6243     avg: 7064     median: 7285 (10%)     max: 7553 points
3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x1024 +
3DMark 06
min: 5382     avg: 6063     median: 6232 (8%)     max: 6574 Points
3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x800 +
3DMark 06
min: 7121     avg: 7130     median: 7129.5 (9%)     max: 7138 Points
3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x768 +
3DMark 06
min: 6247     avg: 6654     median: 6677 (9%)     max: 7013 Points
3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x720 +
3DMark 06
min: 7355     avg: 7357     median: 7356.5 (10%)     max: 7358 Points
Windows 7 Experience Index - Win7 Gaming graphics
min: 4     avg: 6.1     median: 6.4 (81%)     max: 6.5 Points
Windows 7 Experience Index - Win7 Graphics
min: 4.6     avg: 6     median: 6.4 (81%)     max: 6.5 Points
Cinebench R10 Cinebench R10 Shading (32bit) +
Cinebench R10 - Cinebench R10 Shading (32bit)
min: 2103     avg: 3416     median: 3409 (2%)     max: 4250 points
Cinebench R11.5 Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64 Bit +
Cinebench R11.5 - Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64 Bit
min: 13.24     avg: 15.3     median: 15.5 (5%)     max: 17.51 fps
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
red legend - Average benchmark values for this graphics card
* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance

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 detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.

Fifa 11

Fifa 11

2010
high 1360x768
58.7  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
29.6  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings high.
Mafia 2

Mafia 2

2010
low 800x600
41.7 46.6 ~ 44 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
med. 1024x768
32.3 37.6 38.3 ~ 36 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
high 1360x768
26.8 31.1 32.2 ~ 30 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
ultra 1920x1080
» With most tested laptops playable in detail settings med..
low 1024x768
108.8 153 158 162 171 ~ 151 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
med. 1360x768
31.7 32.7 39 39.3 39.9 41.4 56 ~ 40 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
high 1360x768
21.8 22 26.5 27.2 28.5 29.7 33 ~ 27 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
ultra 1920x1080
11.8 16 ~ 14 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
» With most tested laptops playable in detail settings med..
low 800x600
23.1 33 36.4 36.6 ~ 32 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
med. 1360x768
23 23.2 25.1 ~ 24 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
high 1600x900
10  fps    + Compare
» The benchmarks indicate that the game is not playable in the tested settings.
low 1024x768
49.7 51 52 52 57 59.5 ~ 54 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
med. 1366x768
23 25 26 27 28 32.1 ~ 27 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
high 1366x768
17.3 20 20 21.4 ~ 20 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
ultra 1920x1080
9 11 ~ 10 fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings low.
low 800x600
107.6 112 ~ 110 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
med. 1024x768
high 1366x768
27 30 30.5 33 ~ 30 fps    + Compare + 📈 Graph
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings med..
Risen

Risen

2009
low 800x600
41 47 56.6 58.8 70.5 71 ~ 57 fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
23 25.7 26.3 27.7 28 28 ~ 26 fps    + Compare
high 1366x768
16.8 17.5 17.7 21.2 22 ~ 19 fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
11.9  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings low.
Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5

2009
low 800x600
83.1  fps    + Compare
high 1360x768
31.7  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
17.9  fps    + Compare
» With all tested laptops playable in detail settings low.
Need for Speed Shift

Need for Speed Shift

2009
low 800x600
52.4  fps    + Compare
med. 1024x768
33.2 38 ~ 36 fps    + Compare
high 1366x768
20.4 27 ~ 24 fps    + Compare