NVIDIA has what looks like a new budget circuit called GT218 under development. The big news about is that NVIDIA will make it using TSMC’s latest 40nm manufacturing process, the actual architecture is still based on the much older G8x/G9x family. The step from today’s 55nm graphics circuits is pretty big and being NVIDIA’s first 40nm GPU GT218 will be a really power efficient circuit. Over at VR-Zone they have published a scratch of the card said to sport GT218.
GT218 isn’t just low-profile format, the performance looks to be low as the 40nm version of G96 will not be focusing on any such thing. The GPU comes with 32 shader processors clocked at 1375MHz. The core is clocked at 550MHz, which is identical to the frequency of GeForce 9500GT and 9400GT, both based on the G96 core.
The memory uses a rather narrow 64-bit bus but since the card will sport GDDR3 the memory bandwidth should still be sufficient and as high as it was with GeForce 9400GT despites its wider 128-bit bus.
The trump is said to be the lower power consumption, about 22W, while the complete GT218 graphics card is expected to consume at most 40W, which you can compare to 50W with the older 9500GT/9400GT siblings. It supports DisplayPort and Dual Link DVI which could make it a viable choice for small and power efficient systems, perhaps even a small HTPC.
GT218 is expected to be shown at CeBIT next month before the final launch in April.
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