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Palit GeForce GT440 review

The line of graphics accelerators GeForce GT 430/440 from NVIDIA is seriously pushed aside by new models, for example, the six hundredth series. However, it is still too early to dispose of them. Considering the price reduction, these models will surely interest budget gamers and owners of home multimedia systems.

So, let's try to figure out whether it is worth paying extra for the next novelty, or buying a little outdated hardware. The GeForce GT 430 and 440 models are based on the NVIDIA GF108 chip. GT 430 differs from its older brother in lower operating frequencies, which will inevitably affect the performance of the device.

Since we are talking about representatives of an outdated series, it would be more expedient to test a more powerful model, namely the GT 440. So, get acquainted, Palit GeForce GT 440. It has 512 MB of memory and a graphics core frequency of 810 MHz. The shader unit operates at 1620 MHz. It should be noted that the memory belongs to the GDDR5 standard, which is an undoubted advantage. The relatively small amount of memory often scares off many buyers. But, as practice shows, in budget models of video cards, the increase in memory is far from proportional to the increase in device performance, which cannot be said about its cost.

The study of the characteristics of the Palit GeForce GT 440 demonstrates almost complete coincidence of most of the parameters with the reference sample. However, the Palit product has a proprietary PCB design and original cooling system. It should be noted here that the company offers three modifications of GT 440, which differ in design and the cooler used in the cooling system. Otherwise, they are almost identical, right down to the index. However, this fact must be taken into account, for example, when buying a video card via the Internet, since there is a high probability of getting a product that looks noticeably different from the image posted on the site.

The Palit GT 440 comes on sale in a small cardboard box. Its design is quite typical for Palit products. The front side of the package is crowned with several logos that inform about the technologies that this product can boast of supporting. In addition, there is information about the amount and type of memory, as well as interfaces for video transmission.

By examining the reverse side of the box, you can get information about the main characteristics of Palit GT 440 and the system parameters required for its installation. However, in the last paragraph, the developers decided to be more careful. In their opinion, a power supply for a system with a video card that consumes a maximum of 65 W should have a minimum power of 300 W, with a current of 22 A on the 12 V line. Either we are talking about a very original computer configuration, or Chinese products from Noname are taken into account. ...

Since the device in question belongs to the budget category, you should not count on a rich package bundle. The package, in addition to the video card itself, includes an instruction manual and a disk with the necessary drivers. However, it is highly unlikely that the owners of the GeForce GT 440 will need some additional accessories.

Image output is carried out using ports DVI, HDMI and D-Sub. This is a completely universal configuration that allows you to connect a monitor, projector or plasma panel to your computer without any questions or purchasing special adapters.

The printed circuit board is made of dark brown PCB. Its length is 14.5 cm, with a width of 11.2 cm. Small dimensions allow installing this video card in most modern system units. Palit GeForce GT 440 does not have a high power consumption, so there are no additional power connectors.

The reverse side is almost empty for better cooling.Considering that this model uses only four memory chips, the layout of the elements did not make the engineers rack their brains for a long time. Each microcircuit has a capacity of 128 MB. They are produced by Elpida from Japan. Interestingly, according to the technical documentation, the effective passport frequency of these microcircuits is 4000 MHz, while the memory frequency of the video card is only 3200 MHz. This circumstance creates interesting prospects for overclocking and getting some performance gain. Of course, for this you have to take care of a sufficient level of cooling.

The Palit GeForce GT 440 is equipped with a compact cooling system consisting of a small aluminum radiator and a built-in fan. Reliable thermal contact with the graphics core provides a thin layer of thermal paste. Memory chips, as well as power transistors, do without additional cooling. However, on a video card of this level, their heat dissipation is not particularly high.

Without load, when the automatics reduce the GPU frequencies and the cooler speed, there is practically no noise from its operation. Although even in heavy applications, the GeForce GT 440 is not particularly noisy. The tests showed that even after a long work with the maximum load, the temperature of the graphics core did not exceed 80 degrees, confidently stopping at around 79. The fan was activated by 67%. For the purity of the experiment, using the software, the fan was forced to work at full power. Of course, the noise increased significantly, while the temperature drop turned out to be insignificant and amounted to only four degrees.

Despite the small dimensions of the cooling system, the cooler turned out to be relatively high. So the interface located next to the PCI or PCIe video card will most likely be closed after installing the Palit GeForce GT 440. Another limitation for the owners of this model concerns the SLI technology. If you plan to combine several video cards in your system, then you should pay attention to the GeForce GTX560Ti, or AMD's development Radeon HD6870.

So, let's go directly to testing. Palit GeForce GT 440 was installed on a motherboard from MSI, namely Big Bang-XPower. Other elements worth mentioning are the Intel Core i7 processor, 128GB Kingston SSD. Three Kingston DDR3-225 strips with a total volume of 6 GB were used as RAM. As you can see, the configuration is powerful enough to exclude distortion of the results due to the influence of other components.

We will compare Palit GeForce GT 440 with video cards Radeon HD 6670, Radeon HD 5570, GeForce GTS 450 and GeForce GT 430. Note that HD 6670 and GT 430 are equipped with GDDR3 memory, while the rest use GDDR5.

As the results show, the tested sample is not suitable for avid gamers who value high quality and high FPS rates. Nevertheless, if the picture in the game is not the most important thing for you, then Palit GeForce GT 440 is quite capable of "pulling" the majority of modern games. And we are not talking about the minimum graphics settings. Most likely, in order to obtain an acceptable frame rate, you will have to sacrifice only a high level of anisotropic filtering and excessive resolution. As mentioned at the beginning of the review, this video card will fit perfectly into a home multimedia computer that can satisfy the needs of all family members. Also, do not forget that in many applications the model in question was practically not inferior to competitors with two large memory capacities. Thanks to the lower prices for 512 MB graphics cards, the user with moderate requests can benefit from significant cost savings without sacrificing PC performance.

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