NVIDIA GRID K240Q

How It Compares

The NVIDIA GRID K240Q occupies a specific niche in the database: it is a Kepler-architecture part from 2013, positioned as an integrated graphics processor (IGP) for virtualized environments rather than a consumer gaming card. Its percentile rank of 50 against all GPUs places it at the exact midpoint of the performance distribution, meaning half of all recorded parts are faster and half are slower. This is a critical context for interpreting its scores — it is neither a high-end part nor an entry-level one, but a middle-of-the-pack solution whose strengths lie in specific workloads.

There are no nearest rivals listed in the data for this part. This is unusual and significant. Without direct comparison points, the K240Q must be evaluated on its own merits and against the broader percentile field. The absence of rival data suggests the card was not commonly benchmarked in the same context as consumer or workstation GPUs, likely due to its intended use in virtual desktop infrastructure. Consequently, the analysis here relies on the card's absolute specifications and its single percentile ranking to gauge positioning.

In the absence of named competitors, the K240Q's 50th percentile standing can be interpreted as follows: a system builder looking at this part would find it competitive with a typical mid-range GPU of its era, but with a very different feature set. The card offers no display outputs, which immediately disqualifies it from any direct-attached graphics role. Its performance, when measured by the database's aggregate benchmark score of 0, indicates that no standardized benchmarks were completed or recorded for this part, making the percentile rank a statistical placeholder rather than a measured result.

Memory Subsystem

The K240Q ships with 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 160.0 GB/s. This is a modest configuration by modern standards, but for its 2013 release date it represented a reasonable balance for its intended workload. The memory clock runs at 1250 MHz, translating to 5 Gbps effective data rate. The 256-bit interface is a key detail: it provides more than double the bus width of typical entry-level cards, which helps mitigate the relatively small capacity.

For high-resolution workloads, the 1 GB capacity is a significant constraint. At 4K or even 1440p, frame buffers for modern games or professional applications can exceed this limit quickly, leading to texture thrashing or outright failure to load assets. However, the card's target environment — virtualized desktops — often uses lower resolutions or compressed streaming, where 160.0 GB/s of bandwidth is sufficient for multiple concurrent sessions with moderate graphical demands. The bandwidth figure itself is competitive for the era: it outpaces many 128-bit parts by a wide margin, but falls short of the 256-bit high-end cards of its generation.

The pixel rate of 23.84 GPixel/s and texture rate of 95.36 GTexel/s further contextualize the memory subsystem. These figures are derived from the 32 ROPs and 128 TMUs, respectively. For a virtualized GPU, these rates matter less for gaming and more for desktop composition and 2D acceleration across multiple virtual machines. The data shows a balanced design where memory bandwidth is not the bottleneck, but capacity is the limiting factor for any serious graphical workload.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The K240Q has no ray tracing cores and no tensor cores. This is expected, as the Kepler architecture predates both technologies by several years. Consequently, there is no hardware acceleration for real-time ray tracing or AI-based features like DLSS. Any ray-traced workload would fall back to compute shaders on the 1536 shading units, which would be extremely slow given the card's 2.289 TFLOPS FP32 performance.

The API support is more robust than the hardware feature set suggests. DirectX 12 (11_0) is listed, which means the card can run DirectX 12 titles at the 11_0 feature level — a compatibility tier that enables the API to work but without the full feature set of native 12_0 hardware. OpenGL 4.6 is fully supported, which covers a wide range of professional and legacy applications. Vulkan 1.2.175 support is also present, providing a modern low-level API path for compatible software.

The compute capabilities are defined by the shading units and FP32 throughput. With 1536 shading units and 128 TMUs, the card can handle general-purpose compute workloads, but the lack of tensor cores means no AI acceleration. For the virtualized use case, this feature set is adequate: desktop rendering, basic 3D acceleration, and API compatibility for legacy applications are all covered. Ray tracing and modern AI features are absent, which aligns with the card's 2013 design and its end-of-life production status.

Who Should Consider It

Given the data, the K240Q is suitable for a narrow set of use cases. The card has no display outputs, so it cannot be used in a physical workstation with a monitor attached. Its intended role is as a virtualized GPU in a server, providing graphics acceleration for virtual desktops. The 1 GB VRAM and 160.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for office productivity, 2D design, and light 3D modeling in virtual machines, provided the resolution is kept to 1080p or below.

For gaming, the 50th percentile rank suggests it would handle 1080p at medium settings for titles from its era, but the 1 GB capacity would cause issues with modern games that demand 4 GB or more. The lack of ray tracing and tensor cores eliminates any possibility of using modern graphical features. At 1440p or 4K, the memory capacity becomes a hard wall, and the card would struggle to maintain playable frame rates in any demanding title.

The card is end-of-life, meaning no new production or support is forthcoming. Its launch MSRP of 469 USD places it in the mid-range category of its time, but that price is historical and not relevant to current acquisition. The ideal adopter is an organization maintaining a legacy virtual desktop infrastructure that requires Kepler-era GPUs for compatibility with older software stacks. For any other purpose, the lack of outputs and modest specifications make it a poor choice.

Benchmark Performance

The database lists an average benchmark score of 0 for the K240Q, which means no standardized benchmarks were successfully completed or recorded. This is a critical data point: the percentile rank of 50 is therefore not derived from the card's own performance but from its specification-based classification. In practice, this means the card has not been verified to perform at any specific level relative to other GPUs.

Without benchmark scores or nearest rivals, exact percentage deltas cannot be computed. However, the FP32 throughput of 2.289 TFLOPS provides a theoretical anchor. This figure is roughly half of what high-end Kepler parts achieved, but it is more than double what entry-level Kepler parts produced. The pixel rate of 23.84 GPixel/s and texture rate of 95.36 GTexel/s follow a similar pattern, placing the card in the upper-middle tier of its architecture.

The 50th percentile against all GPUs is a useful heuristic despite the lack of measured scores. In the database's historical context, this means the card should outperform approximately half of all GPUs ever listed. That includes many older integrated graphics solutions and low-end discrete cards, but it also means it falls behind the majority of mid-range and high-end parts from the last decade. For its intended virtualized workload, this level of performance is adequate, but it is not competitive with any modern GPU.

Power and Cooling

The K240Q has a TDP of 225 W, which is substantial for a card with no display outputs and a virtualized focus. This power draw requires a suggested PSU rating of 550 W, which is a common recommendation for mid-range systems of its era. The card uses an "IGP" slot width designation, meaning it is not a standard PCIe slot card but rather an integrated graphics processor designed for server platforms, likely a mezzanine or proprietary module.

The power connector requirement is listed as null, which means the card draws power from the host board rather than requiring dedicated PCIe power cables. This is typical for server-grade parts, where the system power supply is designed to handle the GPU through the motherboard's power delivery system. The 225 W TDP still places a significant load on the system, so the 550 W PSU recommendation accounts for the rest of the system's components.

Cooling is not specified in the data, but the slot width of IGP implies a passive or server-style cooling solution rather than an active fan. In a server chassis with forced airflow, this is manageable. The 28 nm process node from TSMC, with 3,540 million transistors on a 294 mm² die, results in a transistor density of 12.0M per mm². This density is low by modern standards, which contributes to the relatively high TDP. The card is end-of-life, so no current cooling solutions are manufactured, and any deployed units rely on their original server cooling infrastructure.