NVIDIA are today releasing the GeForce GT 710, a new workplace productivity-oriented GPU for home and business use. Based on the tried-and-tested Kepler architecture seen in the GTX 600 and 700-series, the GT 710 is a low-cost discrete alternative to integrated graphics in situations where more horsepower or connectivity options are required.

Beyond improved performance vs many integrated GPUs, the primary function each GT 710 offers is native support for three displays; indeed the importance of three displays has recently been highlighted by Jon Peddie research study which measured a 20-30% increase in productivity with multiple monitors. Reference designs incorporate three display outputs - HDMI, DVI-D and VGA - and support HDCP; 3rd party variations may swap out the VGA output in favour of an additional DVI-I connector. Greater performance than basic integrated graphics (as much as 10x the performance, and commonly 3.5x in gaming) also means that if your expectations are modest you can get quite a bit more out of these cards than your average CPU or APU.

NVIDIA's GT 710 incorporates 192 CUDA cores clocked at 954MHz. To put that into some context the GeForce GTX 650 was kitted out with 384 CUDA cores (double the amount) and clocked 100MHz higher. The GT 710 also eschews GDDR5 VRAM in favour of more affordable DDR3, emphasising the cost-conscious nature of the product. As a 19W part the GT 710 is fully bus-powered through the PCI-Express slot, and hence doesn't require additional PCI-E power connections from the PSU.

Whilst the reference specification of the GT 710 is for a full height PCI slot, NVIDIA's ASIC partners are also creating half-height, single- or dual-slot, and passively cooled designs. These options may be just the ticket for a low-noise or very small form factor system which doesn't require much graphics grunt, but would benefit from either the power or the feature-set of this GPU.

Low-power graphics cards such as the GT 710 are also ideal as a trouble-shooting tool for computing hobbyists who don't have an alternative graphics card lying around. A cheap GPU can help you boot into Windows without putting much stress on your system, potentially helping you diagnose malfunctioning GPUs, internal graphics and other components. It should go without saying that the GT 710 robustly supports Windows 10.

The graphics card is on sale at Scan, OCUK, Novatech and Ebuyer priced from just £29.99. A variety of non-reference designs are available.

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