One week after AMD, it’s over to NVIDIA to put a very low end model on the market. The new GeForce GT 520 doesn’t really replace any of the older range, with NVIDIA’s entry level spread over several generations. It rather completes the list of available models and is positioned between the GeForce GT 220 and the GeForce GT 430.
Basically, this GeForce GT 520 is a low cost version of the GeForce GT 420 reserved for OEMs. While this GT 420 was based on a cut down GPU GF108, with half of its processing units deactivated, the GeForce GT 520 has a new ultra-low end GPU, the GF119. It has 48 processing units and a 64-bit memory bus.
In comparison to the GeForce GT 420, the GeForce GT 520 has 16% more processing power but half the memory bandwidth – it uses one 64-bit bus. Overall then it shouldn’t be down on the GeForce GT 420 or even the GeForce GT 220.
Note that it looks as if the reference clock doesn’t have to be respected by partners. Zotac makes do with an 800 MHz clock while Palit lowers it to 535 MHz, which is likely to make the GeForce GT 520 even more limited.
In any case, this new GeForce hasn’t been designed to do any gaming, but is rather for HTPCs. For €50 it gives full support for video technology and can be produced as a fanless card, as is the case with the Asus version, thanks to its TDP of 29W. It remains to be seen if there’s enough processing power and memory bandwidth to handle high quality videos.
