Nvidia launched the GT 520 at the beginning of April. We’re talking about a low-end card from the company’s Geforce 500 series. Gainward decided to re-tailor it in order to cater to those who prefer their cards silent and dubbed the card GT 520 1GB SilentFX.
Geforce GT 520 is a budget card for workstations and HTPCs and it’s quite an affordable alternative to integrated graphics. Geforce GT 520 1GB SilentFX goes for about €35 and comes with passive cooling and three different video outs. Gainward’s cooler is inaudible but we believe that many HTPC users will not like the fact that the card is dual slot. Geforce GT 520 1GB SilentFX comes with one VGA, one HDMI and one dual-link DVI so most users will be covered.
Geforce GT 520 is based on the GF119 chip, one of the most basic Fermi GPUs. Specs-wise, the GF119 is half of the GF108, which can be found on GT 430 cards. Note that Nvidia followed up on its Geforce GT 220 (no DX11 support) with the GT 420 (with DX11 support) but the GT 420 was reserved for OEMs. Thus, the GT 520 can be considered as the GT 220’s successor.
As you’d expect, Geforce GT 520 consumes very little with a 29W TDP. The card has DX11 support but only 48 CUDA processors (shaders).
