NVIDIA's GeForce GT 430: The Next HTPC King?
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on October 11, 2010 9:00 AM ESTPower, Temperature, & Noise
We only have 1 GT 430 card on hand, so unlike past articles we cannot compile any data on the load voltages of this line of cards. Our lone Asus card has a load voltage of 1.08v, and an idle voltage of 0.88v. Idle clocks are 50.6MHz for the core, and 270MHz effective for the memory.
While GT 430 may not be competitive on a performance-per-dollar basis, it’s hard to argue with these power results. Even at these low wattages where our 1200W power supply isn’t very efficient, the GT 430 still delivers an idle power consumption level 7W under the Radeon 5570, and an even larger 11W advantage over the otherwise performance-superior Radeon 5670. We can’t measure the card’s actual power consumption and NVIDIA does not provide a reference level, but the GT 430 can’t be drawing more than a couple of watts here.
Under load things are less rosy for the GT 430. Under Crysis it ends up drawing 10W over the 5570, which serves as yet another testament to the amazing level of performance-per-watt that AMD has been able to attain; remember that the 5570 had better performance at the same time. Under Furmark the situation is just as bad, but at this point we’re looking at a more pathological case. Overall 10W isn’t going to break the bank in an HTPC (especially since these cards would rarely get up to full clocks in the first place) but it’s something to consider if every watt is going to count.
When it comes to idle temperatures, the GT 430 is second to none. With the card only consuming a couple of watts at idle in the first place, its idle temperatures are barely above room temperature (and even closer to ambient case temperatures). It’s tied with the GTS 450, which impressed us last month with its highly capable cooler. Meanwhile our 5570, which is a low-profile card just like the GT 430, ends up being a good 10C higher. AMD’s higher idle power consumption directly translates to a higher idle temperature.
Looking at load temperatures, these results aren’t all that surprising given the cooler in use. The Asus cooler is practically a passive cooler, as the small fan is not capable of moving much air (though it is unusual to not see Asus aggressive on cooling). As a result it manages to reach higher temperatures, but we’re still only talking about 60C under Crysis and 72C under Furmark. This is worse than the 5570 and its larger fan by a bit, but not significantly so.
At idle the GT 430 is consistent with our other cards. With the exception of a couple ridiculous cards like our GT 240 and in this case the 5570, everything is at roughly 42-44dB(A). The 5570 is more fan than heatsink, which is likely why it has such a poor showing here compared to the GT 430.
The payoff of accepting higher temperatures is less noise to contend with. The GT 430 never needs to ramp up its fan in our tests, delivering a load noise level even lower than the GTS 450, and only worse than a GT 220 that runs up against ambient noise levels. If you want to make a good HTPC card then it needs to be silent, and Asus/NVIDIA have delivered on that here. It’s not quite silent since it’s not passive, but it’s about as close as one can reasonably achieve. It’s also noticeably better than the 5570, a card which is by no means noisy. If noise is a primary concern then the GT 430 is a very good candidate for a HTPC.
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geok1ng - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
The other consumer grade low cost Blu-Ray Player is the PS3. It qould be nice to have baseline HQV2 numbers for the last firmware of PS3 , so that readers could get a measure of how much picture quality, if any, a HTPC has over a PS3.As for the 3D HTPC card, i simply do not see the owner of a 3D TV using such a low end card. The minimum budget wise is a 768MB 460.
Now NVIDIA should work for a passive card that can beat the 5750 on picture quality, until then it is a PS3 for 3D Bluray and a 5750 for HTPC.
Arnejoh - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
Some of us in here likes to see how new and old Nvidia cards is doing as dedicated Physx cards. There is some tests out there like fluidmark. And i know this is no problem for experts like you @Anandtech :)Hrel - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
Looks like the only card I'd buy for the low end is the HD5670. Slowest card you can buy that allows acceptable gaming and it's a great HTPC card. You can easily find fully silent versions.manokius - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - link
It's quite simple:an HTPC Must Be Quiet!Power consumption is a factor but most of all you need tranquility when watching movies etc.
So, you need a FANLESS card for not adding noise to the system apart from what the CPU and PSU emits.
What is this then and why is the author giving it the title "HTPC King"?
krumme - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - link
"The next HTPC King?"Well and the answer to that was pretty much a weak no in my reading.
We have dirt cheap ontario hdmi 1.4, 3d comming with a cpu+gpu for less than this card. This is unfortunately 2 years to late.
dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - link
"unlike all of NVIDIA’s other desktop launches which had GPUs with disabled functional units, the GT 430 uses a fully enabled GF108 GPU. For once with Fermi, we’ll be able to look at the complete capabilities of the GPU."I believe the GTS450 incorporated a fully activated gf106 with 192 SP's, did it not?
Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
All of its SPs, but only 2/3rds of its ROPs and memory controllers.BoonDoggie - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
How can any card that cant do decent gaming @ 1920x1080 be called an HTPC card? What a douchebag title. HTPC video cards have to be:A) Able to do video decoding.
B) Do gaming at the defacto standard of 1920x1080.
C) Do it quietly.
NO HTPC card should even be considered unless it can do these. Yes you can get by without gaming, but, since an HTPC can do gaming and console type gaming is regularly seen on the main TV at home, I think it should be a needed quantifier of a decent HTPC card.
Radeth - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
Hi!I'd like to build an HTPC and I got some questions..These are the specs:
MB: Zotac H55-ITX-A-E
CPU: I3 530 2,92 GHz
RAM: 4Gb DDR3 Kingston SO-DIMM
Optical: LG slim DVD writer
HD: WD Caviar Green Power 500 Gb 3,5"
GPU: Undecided between HD5570 and GT430 or other
What would be the best card to use (even one i didn't mention like GT220) with a 120W power source mini-ITX case?
Thank you
MavAnan - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
The review says: "For now, the Radeon HD 5570 is a clear winner from the picture quality standpoint."Does the 5570 also beat the GT240 from the picture quality standpoint?