Zotac GeForce GT 640 Zone Edition Video Card Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The Zotac GeForce GT 640 Zone Edition was designed to for HTPC users where silence was key. This card has no issues handling Blu-ray video playback and makes for a great passive graphics card. The only place that Zotac dropped the ball is by not including a mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter. Zotac clearly states they designed this card for home theater users, but for some reason didn’t include the adapter they need the most to use this card straight away. That is disappointing as consumers will have to go out and spend another $6 for this adapter.

When it comes to gaming performance the GeForce GT 640 can play the latest DirectX 11 game titles, but you’ll need to turn down the image quality settings and use lower resolutions. If you plan on gaming at 1680×1050 or lower then this card should be up to the task when the IQ settings are down. Our benchmarks today showed that with the image quality settings cranked up that the GeForce GT 640 just doesn’t have enough horse power to get the job done. The GK107 has just 384 CUDA Cores and while they are great for running HD videos and GP-GPU offloading, they start to show signs of weakness in the games.

If you are silent video card the Zotac GeForce GT 640 Zone Edition should be on your short list. Just make sure that the cooling fins on the back of the card won’t come in contact with your motherboards chipset cooling solution and that you have a case with good airflow. The Zotac GeForce GT 640 Zone Edition is able to run hot though, but it is always good to have some air moving across the card.

When it comes to pricing of the Zotac GeForce GT 640 Zone Edition we have been told that it will be $10 more than the standard version. The standard Zotac GeForce GT 640 can be found online for $112.28 shipped. This would put the Zotac GeForce GT 640 Zone Edition around the $125 price range. The lowest cost NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 2GB video card on Newegg is $87.55 after rebate, so you are looking around $35-$40 extra for a passive card. Newegg does not carry any other passive NVIDIA GeForce GT 640, so Zotac might be able to get away with the pricing as there is no real competition for this card. If you don’t need a silent card then there is no reason to be looking at this card, but if you do then it is the only one to be looking at!

UPDATE: Zotac says the Zotac GeForce GT 640 has an MSRP of $99.99 and the Zone Edition is priced at $119.99. These prices are not what we are seeing online, so Zotac might be doing a price drop soon.

Legit Bottom Line: The Zotac GeForce GT 640 Zone Edition makes no noise, but you have to pay more to get this passive video card!