Nvidia Corp. plans to unveil its new GeForce GT 240 graphics processing unit (GPU) designed for mainstream desktop personal computers. The novelty will replace GeForce 9600 GT and will bring support of DirectX 10.1 and higher speed to the sub-$100 market segment.

Nvidia GeForce GT 240 – which is based on GT215 core – has 96 stream processors and is projected to offer performance higher than that of GeForce 9600 GT, which is nearly two years old. The chip is made using 40nm process technology and has 128-bit memory controller that supports DDR3, GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory. Nvidia recommends its partners to clock the GPU at 550MHz, set stream processors speed at around 1400MHz and use 3400MHz GDDR5 memory, however, as it usually happens many partners of the company will release GeForce GT 240 with higher performance or lower price (with GDDR3 memory) in order to address different market segments, sources close to the company said.

The GeForce GT 240 will naturally support the latest technologies from Nvidia, such as DirectX 10.1, OpenCL3.2, hardware accelerated high-definition video playback and post-processing, stereo 3D vision, PhysX, CUDA and so on.

There is unofficial information that Nvidia still has issues with the yield of its GT215 core, therefore, the amount of slower-performance GeForce GT 240 will be rather high. Moreover, in order to ensure stability and reliability of the new products many boards will feature dual-slot cooling solutions.

Nvidia did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Nvidia, Geforce, 40nm, gt215