NVIDIA has just thrown up a product page for its GeForce GT 440, a new entry-level GPU based on a trimmed down version of the DirectX 11-capable Fermi GPU.
Readers with a good memory might remember that the green-team released an OEM-only GT 440 last October, but this was actually a different GPU. That chip featured 144 CUDA cores clocked at 594/1,189MHz and 1.5GB or 3GB of DDR3 running over a 192-bit bus.
However, this new GT 440 trims the GF108 core down to 96 shaders and runs at a frequency of 810/1,620MHz with 512MB GDDR5 or 1GB DDR3 connected to a 128-bit bus and clocked at either 1,600MHz or 900MHz, respectively. To confuse things further, partners are free to double the memory to 1GB GDDR5 or 2GB DDR3 if they want to. Another change from the OEM variant is that the SLI-finger has disappeared, although we can't imagine many people would be combining two of these cards anyway.
The card itself is a full-height single-slot solution, although it looks like the cooler takes up two slots and most partner cards seem to have double-height back-plates. However, we wouldn't be surprised to see a single-slot version turning-up soon enough.
As for outputs, the card sports DVI, VGA and HDMI, although we're guessing that the GPU only supports two outputs at once. The board's TDP is rated at 65W.
We may despair at NVIDIA's - and AMD's - name-changing shenanigans, but we think that the company might have gone too far in the opposite direction this time, releasing a different GPU with the same name. Thankfully, the older card isn't going to show up at any retailers, so the risk of confusion is pretty small.
We've already received a good number of announcements from partners, and retailers are listing a range of cards which are available now starting at a little over £70. This pricing puts the GT 440 right in the middle of AMD's Radeon HD 5670 and HD 5750 cards.
