Nvidia Rebrands Two Graphics Cards as 600 Series for OEMs

Nvidia is recycling aging Fermi chips and offers them in a new wrapper. The GeForce GT 520 has turned into the GT 620, but comes with just half the memory 512/1024 MB instead of 1024/2048 MB. However, the new card now supports OpenGL 4.2 and not just 4.1.

Also "new" is the GeForce 605, which replaces the 510 model. The card drops the graphics clock speed from 810 to 523 MHz and the processor clock speed from 1620 to 1026 MHz. The texture fill rate declines from 6.5 GT/s to 4.2 GT/s. The 605 also comes with only half the memory of the 510 and is available with either 512 MB or 1024 MB. While the original cards were rated at a power consumption of 29 watts, the 620 draws 30 watts and the 605 draws 25 watts.

It is interesting to note that that the "new" cards are launched in the 600 number range, which suggests that they are based on Kepler architecture. Even on the Nvidia product page, the 605 and 620 are listed as being in the same family as the new "Kepler" GTX 680.

Nvidia's Bryan Del Rizzo confirmed to Tom's Hardware that both the 605 and the 620 are based on Fermi architecture. However, these are OEM cards and they won't make their way into retail and mainstream buyers may not really care whether there is Fermi or Kepler card in their PC.

  • KNO3
    I don't know why they don't just rename it the gtx 9999x. The uneducated masses clearly love those big numbers.
    Reply
  • Murissokah
    Wow... not only rebranded, but now also downclocked and memory ripped! Way to make product branding clear for the consumer.
    Reply
  • jackbling
    "hey bro i just upgraded my old gtx460 to a new gtx620, but thanks to stupid windows and their drivers it is running horrible, now i have to wait for windows 8 so my 8 core amd cpu and video card will work"

    When they rebranded the 9800gtx+ to a gts 250, i kinda shrugged because it was still a competent card(not to mention it dropped price around the same time), so there wasnt much to complain about. I don't even have a good comment for these; all i can figure is apple/dell/hp are wanting a cheap card so they can say, "WOW!!!New 600 series Nvidia card!!We are awesome, look at the price!!!"

    I am aware this is a useless post, but so are these cards.
    Reply
  • mrkdilkington
    bigmack70Nvidia is getting worse than AMD with their rebranding of GPUs...It annoys me that they do this, but I guess there's enough gullible end users out there that it works.How are they progressively getting worse? They've been doing this for a decade.
    Reply
  • matt_b
    bigmack70Nvidia is getting worse than AMD with their rebranding of GPUs...It annoys me that they do this, but I guess there's enough gullible end users out there that it works.Nvidia has always been worse than ATI/AMD at this in my opinion. The best example coming to mind was the infamous 8800GT - good enough to stick it out for three generations. It would be nice when the two of them stop doing this, but they will continue. I understand fully why they do it, but wish they would at least stop issuing a new name for an old part - this creates a very gray area for litigation (surprised more sue-happy people haven't jumped on this one yet).
    Reply
  • jackbling
    matt_bNvidia has always been worse than ATI/AMD at this in my opinion. The best example coming to mind was the infamous 8800GT....
    Even though i mentioned the 9800gtx+ above, i had forgotten the 8800gt->9800gt debacle
    Reply
  • chuckydb
    Rip-off rebranding only for OEMs?

    Taking advantage of the uneducated masses once again.
    Reply
  • confish21
    idk, I really only went amd because of the sexy retail box.
    Reply
  • vandaminator
    AMD 5670 = 6670 = 7670

    With this move Nvidia really wants to lose for ivy bridge HD4000
    Reply
  • BlackHawk91
    People would would buy any OEM pc as long as they have dedicated graphics, sometimes the number doesn't even matter for them.
    Reply