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Review of Asus GT220 1GB DDR3 PCIe
Published December 16th, 2009
Introduction
I've got a Dell XPS210 slim desktop PC which suits me just fine as a media center PC. However, it's a bit lacking in the graphics department and so I went online to see what I could find. As it turns out, Nvidia has just released its GT220 series graphics cards and because my PC only accepts low profile or half height cards the Asus version of the GT220 was perfect for me. Or so I thought...
The Card
The GT220 comes with 100 million processors and runs at 1000 gigahertz and it costs roughly $100 or €70 in the civilized world. That's a lot of speed for very little money. It accelerates h.264 videos so the Dell can render 1080p videos without breaking a sweat. The card comes with a low profile mounting bracket which I needed to make the card fit in the Dell. This is however were things began to go wrong.
When I opened the box and ripped all the things out I noticed that the extra mounting bracket was indeed low profile but it used two slots. The Dell has two expansion slots; 1 PCIe x16 for graphics cards and 1 PCIe x1 for other things, like my TV card. So the x1 slot was already taken which made the low profile mounting bracket useless. Fortunately, the PCIe x16 slot has an extra plastic holder at the back so the card would sit quite safe even without any bracket. So, I removed the full height bracket from the card and also removed the VGA connector and was left with the bare card with one DVI and one HDMI connector. The card was then installed in the Dell and all the cables were hooked up. When I turned on the PC I first thought something had gone very wrong. There was this high pitch swoosh sound coming from the graphics card. I thought, oh well, the card will calm down once all the drivers are installed. I was wrong.
The fan spins at full speed all the time. I was convinced there was something wrong with the card so I contacted Asus support:
Me: Hi, I've got this GT220 and its making quite a racket. Isn't the fan supposed to slow down at a certain temperature?
Asus support: The card has only two wires connected to the fan so it won't vary the speed.
Me: What!? To make the fan spin slower you just have to feed it less voltage.
Asus support: ...
Me: If there is a third cable going to the fan it's for monitoring the speed not controlling it.
Asus support: ...
Me: So... Are you going to fix it?
Asus support: That model doesn't vary its fan speed. Have a nice day.
I couldn't (and still can't) believe that anyone would build a graphics card today which cannot adjust the fan speed. Who are Asus trying to sell this card to? It's not going into a HTPC because it's just too loud. It's not going into an office PC... because it's too loud. It's not going into a gaming rig because it's too weak. And it's not going into grannies PC because she's happy with the built in graphics. So where is the ideal place to put this card? Well, in the trash if you ask me.
Conclusion
On a scale I give the Asus GT220 -78. It's not really a bad GPU but that's not thanks to Asus.