Yeston redesigns GT220 card

Earlier this month, nVidia introduced its first 40 nm desktop graphics cards, the GeForce G210 and GT220. nVidia has granted permission to its partners to alter these two entry-level cards as they see fit. Yeston, a primarily Asian-oriented manufacturer, has gone a little further than simply changing the cooler on the GT220.

Yeston has re-designed the entire PCB and increased the amount of coppre layers from four to six. The company also integrated a more powerful 3+1 phase power design to simplify overclocking. The memory has also been altered: the GT220 card uses 512 MB of Samsung 1 ns GDDR3 chips with an effective clock frequency of 2000 MHz, compared to a reference clock speed of just under 1600 MHz. The empty contacts on the back of the card suggest a 1 GB model may also be planned.

One of the drawbacks of these modifications is that the PCI-Express slot alone is no longer enough to power the card. As a result, a PCI-Express powerconnector has been soldered onto the PCB. The other connectors include DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort.

It's clear that Yeston's GeForce GT220 graphics card is meant for the budget market and is developed to optimally use the performance of the graphics chip and memory. It's still unclear whether a similar card will be released on the European market.

Tags: ddr3 displayport geforce hdmi overclocking tegra

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