Gigabyte GeForce GT 210 Mainstream Graphics Card With HDMI Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
793 words · ~3 min read
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so today I'm going to be having a quick look at a Gigabyte GeForce 210 512 Meg
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video card there's uh one thing that Gigabyte really wants you to know about
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this particular card and it is that it supports HDMI they have a goldplated
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HDMI connector on this particular card you can see that the whole back is
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pretty much about how it has a golden plated HDMI connector so there's your
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little connector it says golden plated then there's your supports full HD
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resolution this is a whole bun all of this stuff is all about h HDMI and how
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this is goldplated then you've got main features down here in little tiny text
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something about GeForce 210 supports PC Express 2.0 Shader Model 4.1 etc etc
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this is a direct X10 card so why don't we go ahead and get this open the direct
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X10 functionality is not particularly important for a card like this this is
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not really a gaming card it is far more valid or excuse me valid it's far more
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relevant as a uh more like a media card so if you were building a media center
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and you wanted some kind of dedicated GPU if you want to offload some of the
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processing for HD video off to the GPU this would be a perfect fit so you can
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see it comes with a low profile bracket which is labeled DVI and
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HDMI there it is comes with a driver disc so don't use that download the
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latest off NVIDIA.com then it comes with a user's manual okay so the user's
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manual shows you the board layout it shows you um oh okay so we'll we'll see
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this in a minute but it looks like it has a VGA connector as well which you
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can actually remove if you're using it in a low profile case shows you how to
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connect HDMI how to install the software a bunch of different languages thank you
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so much and then in here on a little piece of foam in an antistatic bag you
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have the GeForce 210 512 Mag video card
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so if I could just get that wow look how long this piece of tape is there we go
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it came off excellent so the layout of
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the card is fairly straightforward you've got your standard heat sink which
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is actually pretty nice this is an aluminum heat sink you can tell from how
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light the card is overall has a little tiny fan this I'm not too happy to see
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but my suspicion is that with a low power draw low heat output GPU like this
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even if the Fan's not spinning very fast you're going to get enough Cooling in
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order for it to function properly so I suspect this doesn't need to spin very
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fast because when these little fans ramp up man are they annoying so it connects
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via normal three pin header to the uh to the video card itself there's not a
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whole lot in terms of components on this card so you can see it does use a
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standard PCI Express 16x connection at the back you do not find any additional
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power needed for this particular video card on the back of the card you can see
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we've got a couple RAM chips and then a couple of Clips right here for how the
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front cooler fastens okay then on the
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back we will find all of the connectivity from the VGA connection to
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the DVI connection to the much touted goldplated HDMI connection so you
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can see that while the other two are actually nickel plated okay so you can
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see this is nickel plated the HDMI connector is goldplated now they'll tell
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you a whole bunch of marketing spiel about how this means uh better support
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for HD resolutions or or whatever else but the reality of it is that goldplated
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doesn't actually mean that you have particularly better signal transmission
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but what it does mean is that the connector is far more durable so if you
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were to unplug or plug back in or if the cable gets wiggled gold is a soft and
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malleable metal and so even though it's not the best conductor out there it Con
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enough and because it's so soft it ensures that you always have a good
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connection so you're not going to actually lose contact between your cable
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and your connector if they're both goldplated it's very unlikely so that is
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why a goldplated connector is actually important