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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
120 Comments
View All Comments
cactusdog - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
Thats weird, I've had heaps of ATI cards too and i've never had problems with any of them. How can you have problems with all of them, yet i dont have problems with any of them? weird.Belard - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
I haven't had problems with my ATI cards...bupkus - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
dittodnd728 - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
Beats me.If it weren't for lucky people like you, I wouldn't have tried ATI yet again. I thought it was just a case of bad luck for me.
But now I'm seriously reluctant. They simply do not work for me.
If some ATI executive believes that it's unusual and wants to get to the bottom of it, then I'm here waiting.
gamara69 - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
Work in IT and you will understand. Ever try to put a Radeon in the same system as a Fire GL? Can't, as they both use the same name for their .sys file and neither is compatable with both cards. BSOD on boot. Going back a bit, I had an environment with over 100 ATI Rage 128's. Because of slight differences in the models I required 18 different drivers. The wrong driver would cause BSOD's any time an app with a 3'D button opened. In my current environment we use no ATI video cards as we have driver issues in our multiple monitor setups. We have pulled all ATI cards and replaced them with Nvidia cards and our driver troubles have gone away.Not to say Nvidia is perfect, but at least I can get more than one of them to work regularly together.
AstroGuardian - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
That's because you are new to computers. I have never had a single problem with both ATI and nVidia cards.RGN - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
It wasn't that long ago that ATi drivers were renowned for being terrible and at the same time one of the many benefits of nVidia was the unified driver architecture. That being said, recently I've worked with the A MD/Ti Fire Pro series. Not for gaming, but hi end multi-display setups. The cards and drivers have been flawless - not at all what I expected. The Fire Pro's were selected because they were half height, passive cooling and quad display. There was not an equivalent nVidia card. Kudos to the AMD folk for winning this round!IceDread - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
Weird.I've used Nvidia when I found them to have the better price / performance and AMD other times.
I've had more issues with Nvidia than with AMD (ATI).
I have seen a lot of people have issues with both companies cards.
I do however like that AMD releases drivers each month and makes an effort to improve. Nvidia seams to release drivers sporadically.
There is also one thing that annoys me very much with Nvidia. I can not purchase an nvidia graphic card to use for cuda and use a AMD graphic card as primary. Nvidia will then shut down this functionality. So in my view, nvidia is a bit more evil as a company.
dnd728 - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
Ahh, good ol' days with ATI...Waiting every month for a driver update, uninstalling all drivers & software for my AIW one by one, reinstalling one by one, with reboots, checking out all new bugs, writing ATI's support, uninstalling, reinstalling, manually uninstalling everything, reinstalling, reinstalling all other PC drivers, uninstalling, reinstalling, trying suggested combinations of new and old drivers, uninstalling, reinstalling, and by the time they're out of suggestions - there's a new driver release!
I'm sooo over that.
But as stated YMMV.
IceDread - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
Sometimes I wonder what people do with their computers to make them fail.Uninstall, rune drivesweeper, reboot, install, reboot. Same procedure for nvidia as ati...