# Zotac GeForce GT 220 1 GB



## W1zzard (Oct 10, 2009)

Zotac's new GeForce GT 220 is based on NVIDIA's new GT 216 GPU which features 48 shader processors. While this is certainly not enough to play games at high resolutions it is sure fine for casual gaming. Windows desktop use and HD video playback is what this card is really targeted at and here it shines with extremely low power consumption and good feature set.

*Show full review*


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## Jstn7477 (Oct 12, 2009)

I wonder why the GT220 with 48sp/8 ROPS/GDDR3 is only as fast, and sometimes slower than the 9500 GT (32sp/8 ROPs/DDR2). Are the current drivers really that horrendous?


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## KainXS (Oct 12, 2009)

the 9500GT has GDDR3 by default, sometimes DDR2 is used in its place but in this review the 9500GT has DDR2, the results are what I expected from this card though

its more of a card for a HTPC

The 9600GT had some feature that affected performance by means of the PCI-E bus speed, does anyoneknow if this card has it, that would be nice.


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## newtekie1 (Oct 12, 2009)

Interesting, GPU-Z reads it as DDR2, I'm sure it is just a bug, just wanted to point that out.

@Jstn7477: The 9500GT uses GDDR3 with a default clock of 900MHz, which this card couldn't even overclock to.  The memory bandwidth is likely why this card is so close in performance.  More Shaders, with less memory bandwidth yeilds similar performance.


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## Jstn7477 (Oct 12, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Interesting, GPU-Z reads it as DDR2, I'm sure it is just a bug, just wanted to point that out.
> 
> @Jstn7477: The 9500GT uses GDDR3 with a default clock of 900MHz, which this card couldn't even overclock to.  The memory bandwidth is likely why this card is so close in performance.  More Shaders, with less memory bandwidth yeilds similar performance.



I was also thinking of a memory bandwidth issue. My GeForce 210 is starved for bandwidth by 64bit DDR2, while the 9400 GT has a nice, wide 128bit DDR2 bus for the same amount of shaders (16) and ROPs (4). NV probably just intended these for OEM usage, and hacked down the memory performance to drive down costs and because OEM PC users probably don't look at benchies.


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## W1zzard (Oct 12, 2009)

yes gpuz memory detection on these boards is bugged


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## KainXS (Oct 12, 2009)

These cards are not OEM only anymore, Nvidia pushed them to retail production

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html


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## tonyd223 (Oct 12, 2009)

as I'm thinking HTPC perhaps bench running Blu-ray movie at 1080p? also the sound capability via HDMI - any loss from sound device please?


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## W1zzard (Oct 12, 2009)

tonyd223 said:


> as I'm thinking HTPC perhaps bench running Blu-ray movie at 1080p? also the sound capability via HDMI - any loss from sound device please?



bd decode sits comfortably below 50% with any movie on any gpu on any recent processor

the transfer over the pcie bus and over hdmi is uncompressed digital - no quality loss


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## Steevo (Oct 12, 2009)

performance per dollar the red team kills this card at $79, mebey at $59 or so.


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## lemonadesoda (Oct 12, 2009)

Performance per watt is excellent. This card has a winning chance as a desktop/workstation winner, so long as price comes down a bit. *Great upgrade for an Atom based system.*


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## captainskyhawk (Oct 13, 2009)

lemonadesoda said:


> Performance per watt is excellent. This card has a winning chance as a desktop/workstation winner, so long as price comes down a bit. *Great upgrade for an Atom based system.*



Holy crap you can put these in a netbook


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 13, 2009)

kind of funny that these Cards support DX10.1 when NV stated that they would not support it, guess AMD forced their hand on that one.


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## Delta6326 (Oct 14, 2009)

wow thats insane for the watts that is so low! but if watts dont matter for you i would think the 4670 would be a better buy just becasue its cheaper and out performs on most things but for a HTPC this would rock! i mean surrisly it didnt go over like 30watts!? thats crazy


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