While NVidia’s big news may have been its upcoming budget-range GeForce GT 430 1GB cards which leaked out earlier this month, it seems that the company has been hiding another secret: the GeForce GT 440 range.
Quietly detailed on the company’s website, the NVidia GeForce GT 440 range of cards is designed to offer OEMs a DirectX 11-compatible card for adding in to their mid-range machines.
According to the reference specifications, the GT440 cards feature a 594MHz graphics clock, 1,189MHz processor clock, and either 800 or 900MHz memory clock, along with 144 CUDA cores. Interestingly, NVidia will be offering at least two different models: a budget-friendly version featuring 1.5GB of GDDR3, or a high-end model with 3GB of GDDR3.
The cards are said to be two-way SLI ready – although only support being paired with another GT440 from the same manufacturer – and support PhysX, CUDA, and 3D Vision. As standard, the cards come with HDMI, VGA, and DVI connectors and support a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1600 over the digital ports and 2048 x 1536 over the analogue VGA.
The boards are designed to fit in a single slot, with a TDP of 56W helping to keep the size of the cooler required down to a minimum.
The one thing clearly missing from NVidia’s information is the price. With the cards aimed at OEMs rather than retail, the cost should be kept quite low – although you can expect to have to buy them by the pallet-load.