NVIDIA's GeForce GT 430: The Next HTPC King?
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on October 11, 2010 9:00 AM ESTThe 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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duploxxx - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
makes you wonder how good your IT qualities are.... had tons of ati and nvidia cards, never had issues with ati or nvidia. Sure both of them have had a few glitches but that is more due to MS and the drivers.btw it's often due to crappy OEM implementation of the vendor driver, ever thought of that????
dnd728 - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
Another Einstein...Fallen Kell - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
I bought a passive AMD 5750 which I use in my HTPC, mainly to gain Blu-Ray audio bitstreaming. I have to say, AMD still has a lot of work they need to do in terms of their drivers. As much as I love the capabilities of this card, I spent 5 days getting it to work properly and output the bitstreamed audio. I think that is probably a large reason why their market share hasn't grown. It should have just worked after I installed the latest drivers. But no, I had to download a specific version (not the latest), had to also download audio drivers from ANOTHER company entirely (not AMD), get a specific version of those drivers (not the latest), install them in the proper order (i.e. install the third party drivers after I installed AMD's drivers).... It was hoop after hoop after hoop.... A normal consumer would have simply taken the card back as "broken".khimera2000 - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
I had to change the default audio after the ATI drivers installed... it took me two minuts to get it working ;Dtherealnickdanger - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
If image quality is so important, you wouldn't watch anything but 1080p24 Blu-Ray in the first place! :)But seriously, in the days of DVD, HQV tests were of higher importance because DVD was 480i, when the movies and television shows were typically sourced on film @ 24 fps. With Blu-Ray, you get to watch TV and film in the native cadence with no deinterlacing, and you certainly don't want resoution scaling or conversion of any kind. Any attempt to artificially smooth or sharpen the image would adversely affect image quality.
The most important feature to home theater enthusiasts is the purest representation of the original source, without enchancements or filters.
ganeshts - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
I am sure there are plenty of HTPC users who shoot using camcorders like the Flip or the Playsport. Not all of those videos are in 60fps. 30 fps videos need to be 2:2 pulled-down. Cadence detection helps a lot here.In addition, Blu-Ray also allows 1080i videos. Of course, if you have a video processor, source direct is best. However, a good HTPC is supposed to make a video processor redundant.
We have mentioned in the review that power users can always work around the unimplemented features by doing a 'source direct' playback.
Stonedofmoo - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
For me the only reason I was holding out for this card was to see how effective it would be as a dedicated PhysX card to use in conjunction with my GTX460 1Gb.The GTS450 seems rather overkill for just that task so I was hoping the GT430 would be the ideal cheap option..
Ryan Smith - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
To be honest it's not something I had a chance to test. I've only had the card since Friday afternoon, so there wasn't much room for extras. I'll see if I can squeeze it in today.Stonedofmoo - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
No worries, it would be interesting to see if it's any use for a dedicated PhysX card.Thanks for the review :-)
Snoopy_69__ - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
Unless someone makes a fanless GT430