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ASUS GeForce GT 430 - Can You Really Play Games with Budget Cards?

By Kenny Yeo - 11 Oct 2010

The Basic Fermi

The Basic Fermi

At the recent NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang admitted to the production delays of Fermi, but with the release of the more mainstream-friendly GeForce GTX 460 and GTS 450, Fermi is slowly but surely gaining traction amongst gamers.

To build on its momentum, NVIDIA is now introducing their latest addition to the Fermi family - the GeForce GT 430. As the “GT” moniker denotes, this is a card targeted at budget to lower-end mainstream users. And this is fitting, because the GeForce GT 430 is powered by the GF108, a far more streamlined version of the original GF100 chip that debuted in the GeForce GTX 480. It is also the same chip that powers the GT 415M, GT 420M, GT 425M, and GT 435M mobile GPUs.

On the hardware level, the GeForce GT 430 has effectively only half a GPC (graphics processing cluster). This means it has only two streaming multiprocessors, giving it a total of 96 CUDA cores, 16 texture mapping units and 16 raster operating units, which is a fair bit lesser than the GeForce GTS 450. The GeForce GT 430 is also the first Fermi card to use GDDR3 memory even though it retains a 128-bit wide memory bus. In all and on paper, it is very similar to the GeForce GT 240 that was launched in November last year.

Needless to say, NVIDIA does not claim that the GeForce GT 430 is the answer to all your gaming needs. Instead, it is positioned as the perfect complement to HTPC or media centre setups especially if you into 3D, seeing that it supports 3D Blu-ray playback and HD audio bitstreaming (supported only by the newer ForceWare 260 drivers).

The entry-level and most basic of Fermi cards is here. We managed to get an ASUS ENGT430 graphics card to test drive the GeForce GT 430 GPU.

Even so, NVIDIA says gaming can still be done insofar as users are reasonable with their expectations. According to NVIDIA, the GeForce GT 430 will trump integrated graphics solutions, and will handle the 1280 x 1024 resolution nicely as long as you don’t go wild on the in-game graphics quality settings by checking all the boxes or turn everything up to high.

Anyhow, this got us thinking, could you really play modern games with entry-level graphics cards? To find out, we have have put to the test popular entry-level cards from both NVIDIA and ATI, along with the new GeForce GT 430.

Before we begin, here's a quick look at how the GeForce GT 430 stacks up against competitive comparison SKUs.

Screenshot of GPU-Z detailing the new GeForce GT 430. Note, however, that because GPU-Z has yet to be updated, take these figures with a pinch of salt.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 and competitive SKUs compared
Model NVIDIA GeForce GT 430

NVIDIA GeForce GT 240

NVIDIA GeForce GT 220

ATI Radeon HD 5670 

ATI Radeon HD 5570

ATI Radeon HD 5450
Core Code GF108 GT215 GT216 Redwood XT Redwood PRO Cedar PRO
Transistor Count Unknown 727 million  486 million 627 million 627 million 292 million
Manufacturing Process 40nm  40nm 40nm 40nm 40nm 40nm
Core Clock  700MHz 550MHz  625MHz 775MHz 650MHz 650MHz
Stream Processors  96 Stream Processors 96 Stream Processors  48 Stream Processors 400 Stream Processing Units 400 Stream Processing Units 80 Stream Processing Units
Stream Processor Clock  1400MHz 1340MHz  1350MHz 775MHz 650MHz 650MHz
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF) units  16 32  16 20 20 8
Raster Operator units (ROP)  16 8  8 8 8 4
Memory Clock  1800MHz GDDR3 1800MHz GDDR3 / 3400MHz GDDR5  2000MHz GDDR3 4000MHz GDDR5 1800MHz GDDR3 1600MHz GDDR3
DDR Memory Bus  128-bit  128-bit  128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 64-bit
Memory Bandwidth  28.8GB/s 28.8GB/s / 57.6GB/s  16.0GB/s 76.8GB/s 28.8GB/s 12.8GB/s
PCI Express Interface  PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16  PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16
Molex Power Connectors None None None None None None
Multi GPU Technology None None None CrossFireX None None
DVI Output Support  2 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link  2 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link
HDCP Output Support  Yes Yes  Yes Yes Yes Yes
Street Price  Launch Price: ~US$79 ~US$89 ~US$70 ~US$99  ~US$79 ~US$55

 

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7.5
  • Performance 7.5
  • Features 7.5
  • Value 7
The Good
Compact size
Decent overclockability
Runs cool and quiet
The Bad
Reference clock speeds
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