ASUS Launches An Old GPU: The NVIDIA GT 710 with Four 4K HDMI Ports
by Dr. Ian Cutress on April 13, 2020 9:30 AM EST
I've noticed of late that certain companies are 'relaunching' older parts in new designs. We've seen it recently with some of the older AMD APUs finding their way into new motherboard designs, but here it's a case of a base GPU returning to the market. ASUS has listed on its website a 'new' GT 710: this is a super low end graphics chip with 192 CUDA cores on the 87 mm2 GK208 Kepler die that originally launched in late 2015 / early 2016. The goal of this sort of graphics card us to supply basic video outputs to machines that do not come with any integrated graphics on the processor.
What's different about this card, which comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, is that it has four HDMI video outputs. On a modern graphics card you might expect a DisplayPort or two, but here it's all just HDMI. Despite the GK208 GPU not supporting HDMI 2.0 natively, this is the sort of card that is going to take advantage of NVIDIA opening up 4K60 with 4:2:0 subchroma sampling support on Kepler, which makes it useful for video at the most (you won't want to be running a full desktop experience with it).
ASUS states that the card can support 4K60 in this mode when one monitor is attached, or 4K30 when multiple displays are attached. Obviously with this horsepower we're not going to be doing any gaming - it's simply at the cheap end of the spectrum for office machines or library machines or similar. ASUS suggests using multiple cards at once for anyone that needs 12-16+ displays.
This card uses a PCIe 2.0 x1 connection, ensuring compatibility for a wide range of older machines, and offers a 954 MHz engine clock and a 5000 MHz memory clock. The GT710-4H-SL-2GD5 is expected to be in the ~$50 range when it comes to market.
Source: FanlessTech, ASUS
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Flunk - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Looks like something you'd want to run billboards or other large high-res multi-unit displays.DanNeely - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Yup. Looking on Newegg the standard GT710 config is 1xDVI, 1xVGA, 1xHDMI; with some cards dropping the VGA to save a few pennies and hit half-height size. (Many of the rest have the VGA on a ribbon cable; and could do the same by unplugging it and swapping for a smaller bracket.)For the digital signs/etc market this is intended for cheap is the name of the game; an old small design on a mature and now very cheap 28nm process is exactly what they want. It's all about cramming in as many outputs as possible as cheaply as possible.
MenhirMike - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Aye. Especially since these are x1 and single slot, you can fit 6 of them in an ATX board and drive 24 displays at the same time - that would be a neat video wall, or command center.Samus - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
It's unfortunate they couldn't pick even a slightly higher-spec GPU that could drive more displays simultaneously at 4K60.CaedenV - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
that was my first thought too, until I read that it was 4K 4:2:0. That is literally only good for video. Any kind of text or static slideshow would look terrible with that.And 4 4k videos running off the same 5 year old low-end card? I wonder what kind of encoding it would need to be to play back without stuttering.
doubledeej - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
4:2:0 isn't as bad as it might seem with text -- it only becomes an issue with small, colored text on a colored background. If either the text or background is either black or white you literally can't tell the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:4:4ballsystemlord - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
@Ian , what's wrong with MB integrated GFX, or an APU, or a different low-end GPU offering (such as RX530/RX540)?What makes this part needed?
ads295 - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I think it's pretty obvious that the video ports coupled with 4K outputs are the USP here.ballsystemlord - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
The RX530 and RX540 both support 4k.Death666Angel - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Where do you get something like an RX 530 or 540? Neither Amazon, nor Ebay, nor the few price comparison websites I frequent list those GPUs. And Ian never said the things you mentioned to be inferior. He specifically mentions that some systems just don't have iGPUs. If you find a new RX 530 with similar specs in the wild, maybe sent him a tweet and he'll do a news piece about it.