Yup. Looking on Newegg the standard GT710 config is 1xDVI, 1xVGA, 1xHDMI; with some cards dropping the VGA to save a few pennies and hit half-height size. (Many of the rest have the VGA on a ribbon cable; and could do the same by unplugging it and swapping for a smaller bracket.)
For the digital signs/etc market this is intended for cheap is the name of the game; an old small design on a mature and now very cheap 28nm process is exactly what they want. It's all about cramming in as many outputs as possible as cheaply as possible.
Aye. Especially since these are x1 and single slot, you can fit 6 of them in an ATX board and drive 24 displays at the same time - that would be a neat video wall, or command center.
that was my first thought too, until I read that it was 4K 4:2:0. That is literally only good for video. Any kind of text or static slideshow would look terrible with that. And 4 4k videos running off the same 5 year old low-end card? I wonder what kind of encoding it would need to be to play back without stuttering.
4:2:0 isn't as bad as it might seem with text -- it only becomes an issue with small, colored text on a colored background. If either the text or background is either black or white you literally can't tell the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:4:4
Where do you get something like an RX 530 or 540? Neither Amazon, nor Ebay, nor the few price comparison websites I frequent list those GPUs. And Ian never said the things you mentioned to be inferior. He specifically mentions that some systems just don't have iGPUs. If you find a new RX 530 with similar specs in the wild, maybe sent him a tweet and he'll do a news piece about it.
I'm assuming this is going to be use by SIs/OEMs. Therefore, its unlikely to be on Amazon or Ebay. If you are certain they're no longer produced, then this https://www.anandtech.com/show/4307/amd-launches-r... has double the memory width, more compute units (cuda, SP)(192 vs. 480 or 320), and more texture units (16, vs 24 or 32). It does support 8 displays although no max resolution is mentioned.
I'd never even heard of the RX540, but, sure as heck, ....AMD does indeed list it at it's website; I find nothing regarding any RX530 , however... (I can find neither for sale on Amazon...are they perhaps new, or, OEM only?)
My money's on unique selling point. But I kind of hope they actually meant "Urban Services Plan" or "Utah State Prison" or "Universal Self-Loading Pistol".
Integrated only does 2 or 3 graphics out; the entire point of this card is to run lots of near static displays as cheaply as possible.
There's no reason they couldn't do something similar with a bottom end AMD GPU; but the RX530's die is about 50% larger (125 vs 79mm^2) making it more expensive to produce. It also runs hotter with the one TDP number I can find being ~30W higher than the 710 (50 vs 19W). That's full load not idle/semi-idle (running 4x4k neither card is likely to be at its lowered power consumption state); but suggests that the AMD card is probably going to use more power. And for a system that will typically be on 50-100% of the time for 5-10 years, even a few watts of extra power consumption will add up. $0.10/kWh is roughly $1/watt-year.
The last, and biggest hit is that it doesn't look like the 530/540 are still being made. When I googled trying to find current prices for them, I got suggestions for the 550 and higher instead.
Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines. Getting a lower-power GPU but still be able to run 4K displays is the target design goal here.
For video walls/signage, you have a bunch of displays that need to be connected, so multiple outputs is a requirement. More mfgs are creating cheap 4K LCDs, so the higher support resolutions means they are all display in their native 4K modes. With multiple boards, you can now support larger signage with a single control PC.
The big thing of the lower power used is that now you have that much less heat being generated. A heatsink-only design means you don't have to worry about fans failing long-term. Both of those translate into more reliable commercial usage, with less maintenance needed.
It's cheaper. A lot cheaper. GK208 is 28nm, and GT 710 has half of the Shader Array disabled. These cards might as well come in Cereal Boxes. This is actually a fantastic idea for a system needing 8+ displays without having to splash on expensive video cards.
@Ian , what's wrong with MB integrated GFX, or an APU, or a different low-end GPU offering (such as RX530/RX540)? What makes this part needed?
The question is can integrated GPU support up to 12 and 16 screens? In this case, you can have 3 or 4 of these cards and run a billboard/ signage that comprises of many monitors since it just requires a PCI-E x1 slot which a MATX should offer at least 4.
I do hope Nvidia will be selling this cheap because its a very basic card.
nVidia won't be selling it. It's an Asus board. And no, an integrated GPU can't support 12 screens, mostly because that's such a rare use case that there's no reason to support it. Almost everything supports 4 screens max.
It really isn’t. I manage a fleet of 10+ year old computers. I deal with a number of bottom of the barrel GPUs (the 710 included) trying to display anything on modern OS. If you can afford 16 monitors then you can afford a slightly better option to drive them.
Digital billboard card, 4 x HDMI 2.0 outs makes it cheaper on the monitor side (HDTVs rarely have DP connectors). Curious if this "encore" could actually play 4x 4 K video at 60p?
Forgot to add: at around $ 50, it's not that much more than a PCIe card with 3 or 4 HDMI 2.0 ports to use built-in graphics, if such a thing even exists. And even a low-end Kepler isn't worse than a regular Intel iGPU.
Also, anecdotally, I own a GT 710...alongside an UHD 630. And, believe it or not (see benchmarks above), the Intel UHD 630 has the performance crown in my system.
The current-day equivalent, the NVIDIA GT 1030 (based on GP108), has likely never dropped below $80.
The low-end market is completely asinine: pay 80% of the price and get 40% of the performance. That's what you wanted, right?
I picked up two GT710s already for two WCG servers with AM4 mobos that won't allow POST without dGPU in the system. (Gigabyte for the win: all three of my B450/350 Giga motherboards will POST without a DGPU, even with a Ryzen 7 2700). The other boards, Asus and MSI thus need 710s for booting - though all machines are remotely managed.
This card interests me, for a creativity system with multiple displays, since one of these could give me a huuuuge amount of real estate on the cheap, while I can have my gaming card (RX 5700) in another system set up for gaming.
I have one of these as well in a server - the built-in graphics (I believe provided by the AST series of chips) are HORRIFIC. A simple, cheap GT710 is much better - which shows just how bad those AST graphics are. Works great, does what it needs to do and uses minimal power.
The GT710 is basically a modern equivalent of what the ATI Rage used to be: A cheap and low-power graphics card to put into a whitebox server that doesn't have IPMI. Except that unlike the ATI Rage, it's compatible with UEFI and PCI Express, available in x1 slots. I would prefer if there's something even simpler/cheaper, but for that purpose, the GT710 is great.
Though if you need something a bit more beefy, I'd choose a GT 1030 at the least, but those are either active cooling, or 2 slot passive cooling solutions, and I'm not aware of them being available in PCIe x1.
(FWIW, I use one in a Threadripper server, since the TR doesn't have integrated graphics and the board I've chosen doesn't have IPMI. Works perfectly fine for that purpose).
I was recently looking for a way to hook 2 4K monitors to a desktop system for web browsing and software development. I don't game ever and I'm not overly concerned about color quality. 30 HZ refresh is fine. I got the desktop system for free so I didn't want to spend much money on a graphics card.
I did my research and found the GT 710. It looked like exactly what I needed, but I wasn't real happy about spending ~$45 for something this low end. Just for yuks I checked Facebook Marketplace and found somebody locally who was selling a used eVGA GT 710 for $25! I bought it.
It's been working great! I suspect that this new card with 4 HDMI outputs will also work fine for people with requirements similar to mine.
I've had a Kepler (GK208) DDR3 GT 730 for a few years now. It doesn't have the oomph to power 1080p60, much less 4K60 with lower specs. It does, however, do 1080p30 @ 4:4:4 nicely and reliably.
I wish amd would launch a new low end gpu copying the integrated gpu on their entry level APU's and sticking it on a die. That way people could have a low power gpu that supports the latest video formats and hdmi/dp standards and it would use little power.
Its an interesting proposition for a few niche markets. One not mentioned is h264 transcoding, which on a silent PCIe x1 card is actually useful in a few scenarios I have where racking a ATX board with 7 of these would be good.. The problem is the Quadro P400 or P600 with their 3 or 4 x mini DP out that you can dongle to HDMI are not much more and support h265.
Made the meat of it low pro and then failed with the IO breakout. Would have been a winner in many of the small form factor boxes business love to buy.
If one has a ton of monitors, wouldn't it be easier to set up a DP MST instead? Or is this just an attempt at making it as cheap as possible? 4 DP hubs are a bit more costly as well, but seem like a possible solution.
I've been looking at a custom case build with a couple small monitors in / on the case front, just for 'fun' (Stat monitoring, Rainmeter gauges, eye candy like that). Small 800x480 rez LCDs with HDMI inputs are $30-60. But with one real monitor (DP) and a VR headset too, I'm running short of inputs. Something like this would be perfect to drive those and not add a lot of overhead. Also don't want to tie up a USB-C port...
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Flunk - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Looks like something you'd want to run billboards or other large high-res multi-unit displays.DanNeely - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Yup. Looking on Newegg the standard GT710 config is 1xDVI, 1xVGA, 1xHDMI; with some cards dropping the VGA to save a few pennies and hit half-height size. (Many of the rest have the VGA on a ribbon cable; and could do the same by unplugging it and swapping for a smaller bracket.)For the digital signs/etc market this is intended for cheap is the name of the game; an old small design on a mature and now very cheap 28nm process is exactly what they want. It's all about cramming in as many outputs as possible as cheaply as possible.
MenhirMike - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Aye. Especially since these are x1 and single slot, you can fit 6 of them in an ATX board and drive 24 displays at the same time - that would be a neat video wall, or command center.Samus - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
It's unfortunate they couldn't pick even a slightly higher-spec GPU that could drive more displays simultaneously at 4K60.CaedenV - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
that was my first thought too, until I read that it was 4K 4:2:0. That is literally only good for video. Any kind of text or static slideshow would look terrible with that.And 4 4k videos running off the same 5 year old low-end card? I wonder what kind of encoding it would need to be to play back without stuttering.
doubledeej - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
4:2:0 isn't as bad as it might seem with text -- it only becomes an issue with small, colored text on a colored background. If either the text or background is either black or white you literally can't tell the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:4:4ballsystemlord - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
@Ian , what's wrong with MB integrated GFX, or an APU, or a different low-end GPU offering (such as RX530/RX540)?What makes this part needed?
ads295 - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I think it's pretty obvious that the video ports coupled with 4K outputs are the USP here.ballsystemlord - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
The RX530 and RX540 both support 4k.Death666Angel - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Where do you get something like an RX 530 or 540? Neither Amazon, nor Ebay, nor the few price comparison websites I frequent list those GPUs. And Ian never said the things you mentioned to be inferior. He specifically mentions that some systems just don't have iGPUs. If you find a new RX 530 with similar specs in the wild, maybe sent him a tweet and he'll do a news piece about it.ballsystemlord - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I'm assuming this is going to be use by SIs/OEMs. Therefore, its unlikely to be on Amazon or Ebay.If you are certain they're no longer produced, then this https://www.anandtech.com/show/4307/amd-launches-r...
has double the memory width, more compute units (cuda, SP)(192 vs. 480 or 320), and more texture units (16, vs 24 or 32). It does support 8 displays although no max resolution is mentioned.
MDD1963 - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I'd never even heard of the RX540, but, sure as heck, ....AMD does indeed list it at it's website; I find nothing regarding any RX530 , however... (I can find neither for sale on Amazon...are they perhaps new, or, OEM only?)1_rick - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
What are you using "USP" to stand for here? The acronym has a LOT of different expansions.MDD1963 - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Heckler und Koch made the excellent USP, Universal Service Pistol! :)1_rick - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Ha!close - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
My money's on unique selling point. But I kind of hope they actually meant "Urban Services Plan" or "Utah State Prison" or "Universal Self-Loading Pistol".boozed - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
I'm curious to know which one you thought it wascallmebob - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
An Unapologetically Snarky Pisstaker would say that USP stands for "Utterly Stupid People"...DanNeely - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Integrated only does 2 or 3 graphics out; the entire point of this card is to run lots of near static displays as cheaply as possible.There's no reason they couldn't do something similar with a bottom end AMD GPU; but the RX530's die is about 50% larger (125 vs 79mm^2) making it more expensive to produce. It also runs hotter with the one TDP number I can find being ~30W higher than the 710 (50 vs 19W). That's full load not idle/semi-idle (running 4x4k neither card is likely to be at its lowered power consumption state); but suggests that the AMD card is probably going to use more power. And for a system that will typically be on 50-100% of the time for 5-10 years, even a few watts of extra power consumption will add up. $0.10/kWh is roughly $1/watt-year.
The last, and biggest hit is that it doesn't look like the 530/540 are still being made. When I googled trying to find current prices for them, I got suggestions for the 550 and higher instead.
romrunning - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines. Getting a lower-power GPU but still be able to run 4K displays is the target design goal here.For video walls/signage, you have a bunch of displays that need to be connected, so multiple outputs is a requirement. More mfgs are creating cheap 4K LCDs, so the higher support resolutions means they are all display in their native 4K modes. With multiple boards, you can now support larger signage with a single control PC.
The big thing of the lower power used is that now you have that much less heat being generated. A heatsink-only design means you don't have to worry about fans failing long-term. Both of those translate into more reliable commercial usage, with less maintenance needed.
lesp4ul - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Because he doesn't like nvidia. That's why he insisted.AshlayW - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
It's cheaper. A lot cheaper. GK208 is 28nm, and GT 710 has half of the Shader Array disabled. These cards might as well come in Cereal Boxes. This is actually a fantastic idea for a system needing 8+ displays without having to splash on expensive video cards.lesp4ul - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Why so insisted?watzupken - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
@Ian , what's wrong with MB integrated GFX, or an APU, or a different low-end GPU offering (such as RX530/RX540)?What makes this part needed?
The question is can integrated GPU support up to 12 and 16 screens? In this case, you can have 3 or 4 of these cards and run a billboard/ signage that comprises of many monitors since it just requires a PCI-E x1 slot which a MATX should offer at least 4.
I do hope Nvidia will be selling this cheap because its a very basic card.
bananaforscale - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
nVidia won't be selling it. It's an Asus board. And no, an integrated GPU can't support 12 screens, mostly because that's such a rare use case that there's no reason to support it. Almost everything supports 4 screens max.meacupla - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
If stocks weren't tanking so hard, this is exactly what you'd want to run 16+ displays at once.willis936 - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
It really isn’t. I manage a fleet of 10+ year old computers. I deal with a number of bottom of the barrel GPUs (the 710 included) trying to display anything on modern OS. If you can afford 16 monitors then you can afford a slightly better option to drive them.boozed - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I... how are those two things linked?eastcoast_pete - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Digital billboard card, 4 x HDMI 2.0 outs makes it cheaper on the monitor side (HDTVs rarely have DP connectors). Curious if this "encore" could actually play 4x 4 K video at 60p?eastcoast_pete - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Forgot to add: at around $ 50, it's not that much more than a PCIe card with 3 or 4 HDMI 2.0 ports to use built-in graphics, if such a thing even exists. And even a low-end Kepler isn't worse than a regular Intel iGPU.ikjadoon - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Oh, but it is. The GT 710 is significantly worse than Intel's UHD 630:https://benchmarks.ul.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeFo...
https://benchmarks.ul.com/hardware/gpu/Intel+UHD+G...
The UHD 630 is roughly between the GT 730 and GT 740. The GT 710 is unequivocal trash and is decimated by even Intel's ancient iGPU tech.
ikjadoon - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Also, anecdotally, I own a GT 710...alongside an UHD 630. And, believe it or not (see benchmarks above), the Intel UHD 630 has the performance crown in my system.The current-day equivalent, the NVIDIA GT 1030 (based on GP108), has likely never dropped below $80.
The low-end market is completely asinine: pay 80% of the price and get 40% of the performance. That's what you wanted, right?
eastcoast_pete - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Thanks for the information, and "Ouch" . A dGPU beaten by a humdrum Intel iGPU (not an Iris), that's painful.bananaforscale - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
And that 40% of the performance is probably the GDDR version, not DDR. :DAshlayW - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I picked up two GT710s already for two WCG servers with AM4 mobos that won't allow POST without dGPU in the system. (Gigabyte for the win: all three of my B450/350 Giga motherboards will POST without a DGPU, even with a Ryzen 7 2700). The other boards, Asus and MSI thus need 710s for booting - though all machines are remotely managed.This card interests me, for a creativity system with multiple displays, since one of these could give me a huuuuge amount of real estate on the cheap, while I can have my gaming card (RX 5700) in another system set up for gaming.
bill.rookard - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I have one of these as well in a server - the built-in graphics (I believe provided by the AST series of chips) are HORRIFIC. A simple, cheap GT710 is much better - which shows just how bad those AST graphics are. Works great, does what it needs to do and uses minimal power.MenhirMike - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
The GT710 is basically a modern equivalent of what the ATI Rage used to be: A cheap and low-power graphics card to put into a whitebox server that doesn't have IPMI. Except that unlike the ATI Rage, it's compatible with UEFI and PCI Express, available in x1 slots. I would prefer if there's something even simpler/cheaper, but for that purpose, the GT710 is great.Though if you need something a bit more beefy, I'd choose a GT 1030 at the least, but those are either active cooling, or 2 slot passive cooling solutions, and I'm not aware of them being available in PCIe x1.
MenhirMike - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
(FWIW, I use one in a Threadripper server, since the TR doesn't have integrated graphics and the board I've chosen doesn't have IPMI. Works perfectly fine for that purpose).Hxx - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
No argb and no backplate. So not Asusnobozos - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I was recently looking for a way to hook 2 4K monitors to a desktop system for web browsing and software development. I don't game ever and I'm not overly concerned about color quality. 30 HZ refresh is fine. I got the desktop system for free so I didn't want to spend much money on a graphics card.I did my research and found the GT 710. It looked like exactly what I needed, but I wasn't real happy about spending ~$45 for something this low end. Just for yuks I checked Facebook Marketplace and found somebody locally who was selling a used eVGA GT 710 for $25! I bought it.
It's been working great! I suspect that this new card with 4 HDMI outputs will also work fine for people with requirements similar to mine.
evilspoons - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I've had a Kepler (GK208) DDR3 GT 730 for a few years now. It doesn't have the oomph to power 1080p60, much less 4K60 with lower specs. It does, however, do 1080p30 @ 4:4:4 nicely and reliably.For static display I guess it's fine.
spaceship9876 - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I wish amd would launch a new low end gpu copying the integrated gpu on their entry level APU's and sticking it on a die. That way people could have a low power gpu that supports the latest video formats and hdmi/dp standards and it would use little power.thorski - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Its an interesting proposition for a few niche markets. One not mentioned is h264 transcoding, which on a silent PCIe x1 card is actually useful in a few scenarios I have where racking a ATX board with 7 of these would be good.. The problem is the Quadro P400 or P600 with their 3 or 4 x mini DP out that you can dongle to HDMI are not much more and support h265.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
The miserable 8400 GS, the GPU that refuses to die, is still being sold. On Amazon, for example, you can pick one up for $55-150.Microcenter is also selling it, still. In 2020. With a limit of 1 per household. (I suppose the shame of having more than one is too much.)
lagittaja - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
Cool. Perhaps in a couple or few years 14nm will be cheap enough for something like this to be made but with GP108 instead.Gunbuster - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link
Made the meat of it low pro and then failed with the IO breakout. Would have been a winner in many of the small form factor boxes business love to buy.RSAUser - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
If one has a ton of monitors, wouldn't it be easier to set up a DP MST instead? Or is this just an attempt at making it as cheap as possible? 4 DP hubs are a bit more costly as well, but seem like a possible solution.KrishnaKale - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
LOL, there are limited monitors which support DP MST and these monitors are also relatively costly than the peers.rtrski - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
I've been looking at a custom case build with a couple small monitors in / on the case front, just for 'fun' (Stat monitoring, Rainmeter gauges, eye candy like that). Small 800x480 rez LCDs with HDMI inputs are $30-60. But with one real monitor (DP) and a VR headset too, I'm running short of inputs. Something like this would be perfect to drive those and not add a lot of overhead. Also don't want to tie up a USB-C port...spurblade - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
Where can I buy this ?