The Gigabyte GT 610 is one of the cheapest 2GB Nvidia GeForce cards we've ever seen. At around £34 (depending on where you shop), it's certainly worth considering. But there are some areas of concern that must be addressed before you go out and buy one.
It’s an upgraded version of the GT 520 from some years ago, and it even uses the same GF119 GPU but without the unlocked features. It's not based on the Kepler GeForce design, as was expected when the GT 610, 620 and 630 were released; instead the 610 is actually based on the Fermi 40nm GPUs that saw a tour of duty in OEM laptops and desktops before being used in these examples.
The GT 610 has an 810MHz core clock, with a 1.3GHz DDR3 memory clock, alongside 48 shading units, eight texture mapping units and a TDP of 29W. As you would expect, it's a PCI-E 2.0 64-bit card with HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs that can, theoretically at least, throw out a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1600 across a pair of monitors.
Naturally, this is a single-slot, low-profile card, so it doesn't require any extra power connectors. There's a single cooling solution in the form of a heatsink and small fan, which is slim and won't cause too much interference in smaller cases.
On paper, the Gigabyte GT 610 is a perfectly capable card, and to some degree, it is in reality. However, the remarkably low 3DMark score of 560 means that you'll be struggling to get any decent graphics from most, if not all, of the latest games.
Still, it's ideally suited for normal desktop duties. If your PC is going to be used for general surfing, image manipulation and light video editing, then this card will offer a much needed boost beyond a motherboard’s on-board graphics.
Also, if you've set up a small, low-profile media centre, the GT 610 will certainly suffice and deliver good HD quality media without breaking into a sweat. In fact, for just £35, it's not a bad selection for those of you who build low-cost media centres to sell on, and you can get away with a relatively low-cost 300W power supply as well.
In short, if you're thinking of building up a gaming machine, one that's capable of a good frames per second in games from the last few years, then sadly you'll have to consider something with a bit more grunt. But if all you require is a more lightweight desktop machine, with only a bit of light gaming, then this is a good choice for the price.