Zotac GeForce 640 ZONE Announced

Zotac, makers of the GeForce GT video cards, have made yet another announcement involving their popular GeForce series. Two new editions are set to be released, the GeForce 630 and 640 ZONE edition video cards, and according to the press, they promise to usher in a new era of “quiet computing.”

Without beating around the bush, the capabilities of these two cards are impressive. The GeForce 630 ZONE will offer 96 processor cores, 1 GB DDR 3 memory with a memory clock at 1333 MHz, and an engine clock speed of 750 MHz (with a Shader speed of 1500 MHz.) Toss in the previous model’s 128-bit memory interface and dual DVI and mini-HDMI ports, and you have a nice bang for the buck. The real power, however, is in the 640 ZONE.

Imagine, if you will, 384 processors cores and 2GB DDR3 memory, engine clocking at 900 Mz and memory clocking at 1782 MHz. If you still aren’t impressed, the 640 also features NVIDIA SMX architecture, is Surround Sound ready, and comes with dual DVI and mini-HDMI ports.

The cards differ in speed (clearly), and the 640 ZONE features a 4K video output and is able to decode 4K video, however both cards will offer NVIDIA adaptive vertical sync and CUDA technology, as well as DirectX 11 and the Shader Model 5.0—nice perks to help keep customers on the up and up when it comes to the latest games. Their OpenGl 4.2 compatibility and hardware-accelerated Full HD video playback will help ensure the best picture even in the midst of major upgrades. The cards will also be Blu-ray 3D ready and capable of Lossless audio streaming to enhance the ever-pleasant weekend movie nights.

“The new ZOTAC GeForce GT 640 ZONE Edition is our new silent powerhouse graphics card perfect for home theater PC usage,” said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International. “By coupling 4K video decoding capabilities with the new NVEnc encoding engine, we’re able to deliver a completely silent graphics card that lets users connect to 4K displays and view native 4K video content flawlessly – there’s also extra power available to accelerate video transcoding to quickly put your video content on portable media devices and smartphones.”

Truthfully, on paper, the GeForce 640 ZONE seems to be the better of the two cards, but it might be hard to justify, especially if you just shelled out for the GeForce 640 video card a few months ago. Time will tell though, and if you’re looking to upgrade your video capabilities, now seems as good a time as any.

Stay tuned to Gaming Illustrated for the latest news on video card upgrades and the gaming world.

Becca Gray also contributed to this article.