"Last October Nvidia released a brand new graphics card aimed at the budget market, the GeForce GT 220, and unlike the shady GTS 250 this was actually a new product that deserved to be part of the 200 series. Built using a last generation manufacturing process and given the codename GT216, you'd be forgiven to be unaware of all this, as the 40nm GeForce GT 220 turned out to be a dud.

In terms of performance we were disappointed to find the theoretical bandwidth of 25.3GB/s placed this card alongside the old GeForce 9500 GT. Not everyone can afford a high-end graphics card, of course, so we welcomed the addition for the sake of competition. But this is where things got even more ridiculous. Nvidia decided to slap an $80 price tag on the GT 220, even when the far superior Radeon HD 4670 from ATI had been retailing for less for quite some time.

Prices have dropped slightly since then, but our opinion on it hasn't changed much. Needless to say our expectations for the new GeForce GT 240 are underwhelming, but that's not to say we won't give it a fair go. The card is said to be considerably more powerful than the GT 220, though in terms of performance it should still sit well below the GeForce 9800 GT. We really hope the tweaked version from Gainward that we are reviewing today can surprise us, so let's check it out in more detail."