The Test

Although NVIDIA is not promoting the card as a competitive gaming card, we’ve gone ahead and run our full benchmark suite. For the sake of comparison with other cards we have run 1680x1050, however the GT 430 isn’t meant for that resolution. For the GT 430 and similar budget cards we have run separate results at 1280x1024 with appropriate quality settings.

For simplicity’s sake we’re only listing the DDR3 versions of the Radeon 5570 and GT 240; there’s really not much to say once we look at performance as even the DDR3 versions paint a clear picture. Conversely we’re using a DDR3 version of the GT 220 as it’s what we had on hand, although today you’re more likely to find the DDR2 version than you are the DDR3 version.

CPU: Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz
Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Extreme
Chipset Drivers: Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel)
Hard Disk: OCZ Summit (120GB)
Memory: Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20)
Video Cards: AMD Radeon HD 5850
AMD Radeon HD 5770
AMD Radeon HD 5750
AMD Radeon HD 5670
AMD Radeon HD 5570 DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 4870 1GB
AMD Radeon HD 4850
AMD Radeon HD 3870
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 DDR3
Asus ENGT430
Video Drivers: NVIDIA ForceWare 197.13
NVIDIA ForceWare 257.15 Beta
NVIDIA ForceWare 260.62
NVIDIA ForceWare 260.77 Beta
AMD Catalyst 10.3a
AMD Catalyst 10.8b
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Thoughts & Impressions On 3D TV Crysis: Warhead
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  • n9ntje - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    Sad to see Nvidia doesn't live up to expectations, while they want us to believe that they have a perfect HTPC card, it isn't.

    To most people, image quality counts. 3D is still a niche.
  • IceDread - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    Yeap, it's always best if the competition is even, gives us the best prices.
  • medi01 - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    I am afraid market is too slow to react to nVidia having worse products, AMD has nowhere near market share that it deserves to have.

    We can't expect one player to dominate all the time. So when the underdog creates superior products, it should benefit from it. But this is not the case in GPU market, unfortunatelly, as nVidia still keeps much bigger market share, than AMD.
  • dnd728 - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    I've tried quite a few ATI/AMD cards over the years, including the latest 5000 series, and to date not a single one of them worked right, i.e. without keep crashing Windows.
    It could be one reason.
  • electroju - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    I agree and I have also used ATI and AMD graphics over the years. AMD graphics writes the worst software or drivers from a reputable company. I go with nVidia because I care for reliability and stability. I do not mind spending money on nVidia graphics because the money goes towards software development. The cost of AMD graphics is too low to provide enough for software development.
  • Zoomer - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    I have personally found nvidia cards to have inferior hardware quality. This was very evident from the time when quality dacs for vga mattered, and nvidia cards absolutely sucked at that. Further suboptimal decisions made their cards meh.

    Software wise, I thought nvidia's software quality peaked around the time of the detonators.
  • AmdInside - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    DACs depended on the maker of the card. Quadro NVS cards which were made by NVIDIA were regarding as having excellent 2D image quality over analog display. Sadly a lot of NVIDIA partners used cheap DACs on some of their cards.
  • mentatstrategy - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - link

    Nvidia Fanboi: I have used ati cards and they suck!
    ATI Fanboi: I have used nvidia cards and they suck!
  • heflys - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    Hmmm....Haven't had a problem with ATi/AMD drivers thus far.
  • duploxxx - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link

    perhaps you need to read a bit more and see how many 1000's have been recently been affected by this awesome nvidia reliability and stability when they all had to throw away there graphic cards and laptops.

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