GeForce GT 640

[guilhermos]

Hey people, I'm almost decided to get the EVGA GeForce 640 for my first Hackintosh I'm building.
Would be nice if you could help me with some simple questions. I'm with a Gigabyte Z77X-UP5TH

As this is my first time building a hackintosh my priority is to get an ease & very compatible graphic card.

Is it fully compatible with hackintosh?
Is it easy to be configured?
Do you think EVGA is the most compatible in my case?

Thank you!

 

[aaron97]

Hey people, I'm almost decided to get the EVGA GeForce 640 for my first Hackintosh I'm building.
Would be nice if you could help me with some simple questions. I'm with a Gigabyte Z77X-UP5TH

As this is my first time building a hackintosh my priority is to get an ease & very compatible graphic card.

Is it fully compatible with hackintosh?
Is it easy to be configured?
Do you think EVGA is the most compatible in my case?

Thank you!

The 640 is natively supported, its plug and play. All you have to do is set graphics enabler to no. Since its a relatively small gpu, they would all fit just fine in any standard case. Personally I would spend like $20 more and get a GTX 650, it has much more power and much faster memory.

 

[guilhermos]

Thanks for the reply!

I'm brazilian so prices are very different here.
What I found is a ZOTAC Geforce GTX 650 1gb.
Will that be better and more compatible than EVGA Geforce GT 640 2gb?

 

[guilhermos]

Zotac 650 has 1gb of DDR5 so I assume it is much better than 640's 2gb DDR. Right?

 

[aaron97]

Zotac 650 has 1gb of DDR5 so I assume it is much better than 640's 2gb DDR. Right?

It's just faster, DDR3 is slow. DDR5 can transfer data twice as fast as DDR3 with the same memory bus width. You will probably never utilize the 2gb's anyways, I would pick the 650 1GB any day. Not only is the memory faster, the gpu in the 650 is also a huge step up.

 

[guilhermos]

Perfect. I'll go with the 650. Thanks for that!

 

[DBP]

Not only is the memory faster, the gpu in the 650 is also a huge step up.

The GPU itself is exactly the same between the 640 and 650. The only difference (unless you have an overclocked board) is that the memory is so much faster on the 650.

On the GA-Z77X-UP5 TH board using an HD4000-equipped CPU (e.g. i5-3750K, i7-3770, i7-3770K) the HD4000 GPU has a DVI port, an HDMI port, and a mini-DisplayPort (two if you don't use the DVI port). For many uses this is great.

If the onboard HD4000 isn't fast enough for you then a GT640 is faster but only has (dual-link) DVI and HDMI interfaces.
The GTX650 is a lot faster (40-ish% ?) than the 640 with exactly the same power and heat requirements.
Then you go up a bit more in price to the 650 Ti for a lot more power/heat (but more performance of course).
Then up to the 660 and onwards, the prices start climbing a lot more. But you also get DisplayPort interfaces.

For most people 1GB vRAM is plenty, but for huge CUDA processing on 2k+ video it wouldn't be enough.

I have to ask: what are you doing that the HD4000 isn't going to be fast enough for you?

 

[guilhermos]

I have to ask: what are you doing that the HD4000 isn't going to be fast enough for you?

I work with 1080p video on Premiere Pro and After Effects. I usually work on heavy projects in AE with 3d enabled. No 2k video yet.

 

[DBP]

I work with 1080p video on Premiere Pro and After Effects. I usually work on heavy projects in AE with 3d enabled. No 2k video yet.

Fair enough! So you're specifically after CUDA support. In fact I believe you could even have the Nvidia card in there but unused for screen display and only used for PP/AE (not 100% on the details, but I believe so). I don't know if that would be faster for your work in practice, but you could certainly experiment.
I think you've chosen a good starting point in the 6xx range.

 

[aaron97]

The GPU itself is exactly the same between the 640 and 650. The only difference (unless you have an overclocked board) is that the memory is so much faster on the 650.

On the GA-Z77X-UP5 TH board using an HD4000-equipped CPU (e.g. i5-3750K, i7-3770, i7-3770K) the HD4000 GPU has a DVI port, an HDMI port, and a mini-DisplayPort (two if you don't use the DVI port). For many uses this is great.

If the onboard HD4000 isn't fast enough for you then a GT640 is faster but only has (dual-link) DVI and HDMI interfaces.
The GTX650 is a lot faster (40-ish% ?) than the 640 with exactly the same power and heat requirements.
Then you go up a bit more in price to the 650 Ti for a lot more power/heat (but more performance of course).
Then up to the 660 and onwards, the prices start climbing a lot more. But you also get DisplayPort interfaces.

For most people 1GB vRAM is plenty, but for huge CUDA processing on 2k+ video it wouldn't be enough.

I have to ask: what are you doing that the HD4000 isn't going to be fast enough for you?

Yes, sorry my bad. What I meant to say was the core clock on the 650 is available in significantly faster speeds then on the 640. I was also confusing it with the 650 ti, which has the same gpu as the 660.