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NVIDIA outs budget GeForce GT 610, GT 620 and GT 630, no Kepler in any of 'em
Look out, savvy graphics card buyer: just because it's labelled 'GeForce' and starts with a '6' doesn't necessarily mean it benefits from NVIDIA's premium 28nm Kepler architecture. We've already seen rebadged mobile chips with last-gen 40nm silicon, and now entry-level desktop cards are arriving on shelves that will stretch Fermi's expiry date even further. There are no price tags as yet, but according to AnandTech the 'new' GeForce GT 610 is a repackaged GT 520 with 48 CUDA cores and an ever-so-polite 29-watt power draw. The GT 620 is a GT 530 with a 49-watt TDP and twice as many CUDA cores as the 610 -- although a meager 64-bit memory bus will put a cap on any performance gains. Finally, the GT 630 is a 65-watt GT 440 in all but name, with a 128-bit memory bus width allowing its 96 CUDA cores to be fully exploited. This latter card shouldn't be confused with the OEM version of the GT 630, which does actually pack Kepler. Bewildering, right? We've quizzed NVIDIA over its strange rebadging tradition and were told that the company simply numbers its products according to raw performance, rather than freshness or chip type -- which sort of makes sense so long as you don't dwell on it.
Everything old is new again: NVIDIA rebrands Fermi-based GT 520 and 510 into 600-series
NVIDIA may have trotted out a brand new beast, ripe with fresh Kepler architecture, but that doesn't mean it put Fermi to bed. Allow us to introduce you to the GT 520 and the GT 510, or as they now prefer to be called, the GeForce GT 620 and GeForce 605, respectively. These OEM GPUs have traded half of their memory and a few clock speed tweaks for OpenGL 4.2 support and a low-end position in the firm's new 600-series. Despite their very Kepler-esque numbering (and NVIDIA's website placing them in the same "product family" as the flagship GTX 680), Tom's Hardware says the firm's Bryan Del Rizzo confirmed the 605 and 620 are Fermi-based graphics cards. Then again, not all cousins share the same surname. File this under "extended family" and call it a day.
