NVIDIA Releases $60 GeForce GT 520

As I mentioned at the start of our Radeon HD 6790 1GB review last week, AMD and NVIDIA have been going back and forth like crazy since the beginning of the year, trying to out-perform the other’s product at any given price-point. Is this practice soon to stop? If NVIDIA’s just-launched GeForce GT 520 is any measure, not even close!

The GT 520 is designed to counteract the launch of AMD’s Radeon HD 6450 last week, with an MSRP of around $60 (models at Newegg are hovering between $60~$75 at the moment). That’s $5 more than the HD 6450, but as it stands, AMD’s card doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. Despite NVIDIA’s announcement happening just yesterday, Newegg already has 4 models in stock.

Like the HD 6450, the goal of the GT 520 is to deliver a robust HTPC-like experience for movies and other content, and also succeed in allowing you to get some light gaming in. It features 48 CUDA cores, a 810MHz clock speed, 1620MHz shader clock speed and 900MHz DDR3. Somewhat surprisingly, the card features a full 1GB of memory, along with the expected 64-bit memory bus.

The GT 520 is a bit of an odd beast, because according to NVIDIA’s own peformance charts, it’s quite literally the slowest card the company has put out since the GeForce 9500 GT. Yes, even slower than the GT 430 and GT 220 – the latter a card that launched about two years ago for around the $70 price-range.

This being the case, this is a rather odd release. Like AMD’s Radeon HD 6450, the GT 520 might also be able to handle light 1600×900 gaming, as the GT 220 proved somewhat sufficient at that resolution a couple of years ago. Compared to AMD’s beefier HD 6450, the GT 520 might have a hard time standing on its own (AMD’s card features GDDR5 which in itself is a rather stark upgrade).

The GeForce GT 520 as mentioned is available now, and for around $60~$75, depending on the model.