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NVIDIA T400 4 GB

NVIDIA T400 4 GB: A Compact GPU for Basic Tasks and Office Use

Analysis is relevant as of April 2025

1. Architecture and Key Features

Turing Architecture: A Balance Between Price and Efficiency

The NVIDIA T400 4 GB is built on the Turing architecture, introduced in 2018. Despite its age, this platform remains relevant for budget solutions thanks to its optimized 12nm fabrication process (produced by TSMC). The card is aimed at the mass market and does not include "premium" features like ray tracing or DLSS - instead, NVIDIA has focused on energy efficiency and low cost.

Lack of RTX Features

The T400 does not support RT cores or tensor cores, which excludes compatibility with RTX technologies (ray tracing, DLSS). However, it retains the advantages of the NVIDIA platform: NVENC support (hardware video encoding) and CUDA for parallel computing.

2. Memory: Modest Specifications for Basic Tasks

GDDR6 on a 64-bit Bus

The graphics card is equipped with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 64-bit bus. The bandwidth is 80 GB/s - sufficient for office applications and less demanding games, but inadequate for modern AAA titles. The amount of memory (4 GB) becomes a bottleneck for professional tasks, such as rendering complex 3D scenes.

Optimized for Low Workloads

The narrow bus and modest bandwidth make the T400 ideal for systems with restricted power consumption (e.g., mini-PCs), but unsuitable for tasks requiring fast data exchange (e.g., 8K video editing).

3. Gaming Performance: Just for Undemanding Projects

FPS in Popular Games (1080p, Medium Settings):

- CS2: 70–90 FPS;

- Fortnite (without RT): 50–60 FPS;

- GTA V: 60–75 FPS;

- Valorant: 120–140 FPS.

In games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield, even on low settings, FPS will drop below 30 frames.

Higher Resolutions — Not for T400

The card is designed for 1080p monitor resolutions. At 1440p, performance decreases by 30–40%, and 4K mode is nearly unplayable.

Ray Tracing: No Support

Due to the lack of RT cores, ray tracing is impossible even in hybrid mode (through drivers).

4. Professional Tasks: Limited Capabilities

Video Editing and Rendering

The T400 can handle video editing up to 4K resolution thanks to NVENC, but it experiences delays when working with effects in DaVinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere Pro. In Blender, rendering using CUDA is 20–30% slower than on a GTX 1650.

Scientific Calculations

For machine learning tasks or simulations, 4 GB of memory is insufficient. The card is suitable for educational projects, but not for industrial computations.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP 30W: Ideal for Compact Systems

The NVIDIA T400 does not require additional power — a PCIe x16 slot is sufficient. Recommended power supply: 300W (even for systems with Core i5).

Cooling

Most models use passive or single-fan cooling. For cases with poor ventilation, it is better to choose a version with a fan. Maximum temperature under load is 70°C.

6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6400 (4 GB GDDR6):

- Better in games (+15% FPS in Apex Legends);

- No equivalent to NVENC;

- Price: $130–140 (versus $110–120 for T400).

Intel Arc A310 (4 GB GDDR6):

- Support for AV1 and XeSS;

- Poorer driver optimization;

- Price: $100–110.

Conclusion: The T400 wins against competitors in scenarios with CUDA and NVENC, but loses in pure gaming performance.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply:

- Minimum of 300W (for PCs with processors up to 65W).

Compatibility:

- PCIe 3.0 x16 (backward compatible with 2.0);

- Support for Windows 10/11, Linux (Nouveau and proprietary drivers).

Drivers:

- Regularly update GeForce Experience to fix bugs;

- In Linux, use proprietary drivers for better stability.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low power consumption;

- Support for CUDA and NVENC;

- Quiet operation (in passive models).

Cons:

- Weak gaming performance;

- Only 4 GB of memory;

- No support for RTX and DLSS.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the T400 For?

The NVIDIA T400 4 GB is an option for those looking for a budget graphics card for:

- Office PCs with occasional use of graphic editors;

- Home theaters (4K video via HDMI 2.0b);

- Educational projects on CUDA programming;

- Undemanding games (esports titles, indie projects).

Price: $110–120 (new models, April 2025).

If your goal is modern gaming or professional 3D rendering, consider the RTX 3050 or AMD RX 6600. But for modest tasks, the T400 remains one of the best options in its price category.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

May 2021

Model Name

T400 4 GB

Generation

Quadro

Base Clock

420MHz

Boost Clock

1425MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

4,700 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

12 nm

Architecture

Turing

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

64bit

Memory Clock

1250MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

80.00 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

22.80 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

34.20 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

2.189 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

34.20 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.072 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

384

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

30W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

7.5

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.6

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

200W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.072 TFLOPS

Blender

Score

214

OctaneBench

Score

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Mobility Radeon HD 5870

1.142 +6.5%

GeForce GT 1030

1.104 +3%

T400 4 GB

1.072

GeForce GTX 760A

1.029 -4%

Tesla C2050

1.007 -6.1%

Blender

GeForce RTX 2060

1506.77 +604.1%

Arc A550M

848 +296.3%

Quadro T1000 Mobile GDDR6

415 +93.9%

T400 4 GB

214

GeForce GT 1030

45.58 -78.7%

OctaneBench

GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile

273 +727.3%

Quadro P5200 Max Q

123 +272.7%

Tesla K40m

69 +109.1%

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

36 +9.1%

T400 4 GB