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
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  • heflys - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link

    BTW, I've only had problems with one card. A nvidia 6600 GT or something.....The fan burnt out, and the card starting getting real hot. You can guess the rest. It was getting old though.
  • dnd728 - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - link

    With fresh new Windows 7 install it would for example never wake up right from sleep - it may permanently freeze or refuse to log in or log in keeping the log-in screen and stop responding, artifacts may also show up.
    In XP none of that happens, but frequently and sporadically the VPU would crash and get restarted. No need stressing the GPU or CPU at all. It would also break the anti-keylogging software. Get the card out, and everything is back to normal.
  • khimera2000 - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link

    Never had these issues with my 5970 on win 7.
  • khimera2000 - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link

    sorry 5870 not 5970.
  • dnd728 - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link

    Well, obviously they're working for most people.
    The question was, why so many people buy nvidia, and I gave one reason, my personal one - not because I love nvidia, but because the comparable AMD does not work for me. Give me any third competitor, and I'll give them a try. :)
  • extide - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link

    If you are constantly crashing windows, (blue screens), then you have bad hardware whatever is broken it needs to be replaced.
  • dnd728 - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link

    True, that's how I know it's ATI/AMD.
  • extide - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link

    It's not ATI/AMD, you may have happened to have a bunch of bad AMD/ATI cards yourself that were bad (in which case you would be extremely un-lucky and I actually highly doubt that is the case), but they in general are NOT. I have ran both, and even 3dfx back in the day. Currently my box at work uses a 4350, 100% stable (4Ghz i7/X58), never blue screens, and my pc at home has had MANY configs (single 4850, dual 4850, single 4870, single 4350, etc) NONE of them caused stability problems, and I have ran many many many driver versions over time . I am not insulting you or your intelligence but I am saying if you are getting blue screens in windows these days you have bad hardware or a bad driver. The ATI driver is not bad/broken, period.

    I'm not even a fanboy I have owned products from both vendors and my next may be an ATI/AMD one or an nVidia one, I haven't decided yet and I dont really consider stability to be a part of the decision as neither one of these companies make straight up un-reliable stuff. Infact last card I had was an 8800GT and then before that was an ATIX1950Pro in crossfire, and prior was just a single X1950Pro, and prior was a gf4 ti4200, then prior was a gf3 ti200, then prior was a voodoo 5 5500, and prior was a voodoo 3 3500, and I had many card before that too. That's just my main machine....

    There IS something bad in your machine, don;t take it as an insult, be mature about it and just figure it out dude.

    I remember years ago I was working on a machine that used RAMBUS, and I dont know if you are familiar with those but they required terminators in un-used ram slots. It had stability issues, I tried everything eventually pretty much swapped out all the hardware. It ended up being bad terminators in the empty ram slots. Weird stuff can and does happen with computers.
  • extide - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link

    Sorry, the 4Ghz i7/X58/6GB is my main pc at home, and my box at work is a Q9400/Q45/8GB
  • dnd728 - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - link

    All of my machines plus a few others being defective in a way that would not allow them to accept ATI, but only competing brands? That's even less likely.

    If your car keeps breaking while driving road x, and nowhere else, then at first you say - a coincidence, then you look for a reason and decide - bad luck, but eventually you just avoid that road. Even if many other drivers are happy with it. It's not worth it.

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