A budget-level graphics accelerator at an affordable price is the GeForce GT 520. This accelerator was introduced back in 2011, so its technical specifications are currently outdated both morally and physically. The capabilities of this graphic chip in this material will be considered in detail.
Adapter niche
Modest technical specifications indicate that the GeForce GT 520 belongs to discrete entry-level video cards. These include the low operating frequencies of the product components, the reduced memory bus width, and the outdated type of RAM. With today's most demanding toys, this adapter certainly will not cope. And with software that has increased requirements for the graphics subsystem, it will not be very easy to work on a PC equipped with such a video accelerator.
Direct competitors of this video card are integrated graphics adapters in the processor. Moreover, the freshest such products have even sometimes a higher level of performance than the hero of this article. As a result, you can refuse to buy discrete entry-level graphics and use the integrated one. Productivity will not change for the worse, for sure, and the budget will decrease. The only case when the purchase of such an adapter is justified is a breakdown of the existing video card and the need to restore the working capacity of the existing system unit urgently and at minimal cost. It is for such purposes that such accelerators are used.
Hardware specifications
Using 40nm technology, the NVidia GeForce GT 520 semiconductor crystal was produced, and its area was 79mm 2 . The chip itself, according to the manufacturer’s nomenclature, was designated GF119 and belonged to the Fermi architecture. In this case, there were 48 stream image processing processors, 8 texture units, and 4 rendering units. The graphics adapter core operated at a frequency of 810 MHz, and the shader domain runs at 1620 MHz. At the software level, support for Direct X version 11.0 technology has been announced. An accelerator NVidia GeForce GT 520 should be installed in the PCI - E 16X slot of the motherboard.
Characteristics this video accelerator indicated that this product can work in 2.0 mode of this hardware interface. Most often, on such an adapter you could find the DVI and HDMI ports. In some cases, manufacturers of such boards additionally equipped with VGA. In the first case, the image output interfaces were digital, and the picture could be displayed as 1600x2560, and in the second the interface was already analog, and the image was displayed in the format 1536x2048.
Video buffer
As noted earlier, the currently outdated type of random access memory was used in the GeForce GT 520. The characteristics of this accelerator indicate that it should be used in conjunction with standard GDDR3 chips. GDDR5 memory is now relevant. The volume of the video buffer in the GT 520 was most often 1 GB, but sometimes there were devices with 2 GB. According to the specifications of NVidia, the operating frequency of RAM should be 1800 MHz. But some manufacturers, starting from the fact that cost comes to the fore in this niche and only then performance appears, saved on such video cards and installed lower-speed memory chips of the same GDDR3 standard. As a result, in some cases, the operating frequencies of the video buffer were reduced to 1200-1500 MHz. The bottleneck in this video device was the memory bus, whose bit capacity was 64 bits.
Thermal mode. Cooling system
Announced thermal package for NVidia GeForce GT 520 was equal to only 29 watts. Therefore, such video cards were equipped with a passive cooling system made of an aluminum radiator, as a rule. Accordingly, the noise level of the system unit with such a graphics subsystem was lower than in the case of using an adapter with an active heat sink system. The value of the maximum allowable temperature for this semiconductor chip was set by the manufacturer at 102 0 . In reality, quite often, when starting PC-intensive and demanding tasks, the temperature of this graphic solution could rise to 73-75 0 . Usually, the temperature of this chip was in ranges from 45-60 0 C.
Analogs
The main competitors of the GeForce GT 520 today are integrated graphics accelerators. An example is HD Grphics Model 530 from Intel or Radeon R7 from AMD. Moreover, they are included in the central processor, and there is no need to additionally purchase them for a fee. Their performance level is comparable to the GT 520. Therefore, buying such a discrete adapter is not advisable even for a budget PC.
As noted earlier, the only case when the purchase is justified is the repair of the PC system unit in the event of an old video card breakdown. Moreover, it needs to be restored to working capacity as soon as possible and at minimal cost. Also in this case, special requirements are not advanced to the performance of the graphics subsystem.
Cost. Owners opinion
For 2000-2500 rubles you can now buy a used GeForce GT 520. Reviews, in turn, highlight the very low cost of such a video card. Another major plus is its passive cooling system, and as a result, low noise levels during computer operation with such a graphics card. Well, the minus in this case is one and very significant: a low level of speed and the inability to launch most modern gaming applications, even in acceptable quality. It is on this nuance that the owners of this computer component emphasize in their reviews.
Summary
For its time, the GeForce GT 520 was a worthy entry-level product. At that time, integrated graphics adapters were not widely used, and even those that were could not compete with it in speed. But now even integrated accelerators bypass this discrete accelerator in performance. Therefore, you can use such a product only in the case when you need to repair the PC due to a malfunction of the video card with minimal material costs.