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BIOS
Extracting the card's BIOS using GPU-Z, we examined the contents using the
nVidia
BIOS Editor. It gives insight into how the card behaves in regard to clock
rates, voltages and fan speeds (the latter not applicable in this case).
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BIOS Clockrates.
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The BIOS indicates that it runs in an underclocked state during 2D operation,
but during testing the clock speeds remained at 550 / 400 MHz at all times according
to GPU-Z.
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BIOS Voltages.
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The BIOS also indicates a 0.1V undervolt in 2D mode.
Video Playback
As a low-end card, the EN9400GT is ideal for non-3D use, i.e. anything but
gaming. Decoding popular high definition video formats is really all a good
budget graphics card is good for in most cases. The better the hardware acceleration,
the less strain is placed on the CPU, freeing it up for other tasks.
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Video Playback Comparison
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Video Clip
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Asus EN9400GT Silent
|
PowerColor SCS3
HD 4650
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Asus EAH3650 Silent
|
|
Mean CPU
|
AC
Power
|
Mean
CPU
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AC
Power
|
Mean
CPU
|
AC
Power
|
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Rush Hour
(H.264)
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43%
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~112W
|
4%
|
~102W
|
2%
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~102W
|
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Coral Reef
(WMV-HD)
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28%
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~110W
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30%
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~115W
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28%
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~117W
|
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Drag Race
(VC-1)
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70%
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~137W
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64%
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~137W
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72%
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~141W
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The EN9400GT does a fairly good job with VC-1 encoded content, using about
6W less than the HD 4650/3650 during the Coral Reef clip and matching the HD
4650 during the Drag Race clip. CPU usage was similar between the three cards
during VC-1 playback. Unfortunately, the card dropped the ball during the H.265
Rush Hour clip which is typically the least demanding video in our test suite.
Rendering this clip is usually trivial for modern GPUs, but the EN9400GT required
more than 40% CPU utilization to play it and expended 10W more doing so than
the two comparison cards.
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