Mass Effect 2

Electronic Arts’ space-faring RPG is our Unreal Engine 3 game. While it doesn’t have a built in benchmark, it does let us force anti-aliasing through driver control panels, giving us a better idea of UE3’s performance at higher quality settings. Since we can’t use a recording/benchmark in ME2, we use FRAPS to record a short run.

This is last and final game that NVIDIA manages to take. The GT 430 manages to take a small but comfortable lead over the 5570, nearly reaching the 60fps in the process.  It doesn’t stand a chance of catching the 5670 however.

DIRT 2 Wolfenstein
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  • Ryan Smith - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    None of the good product shots I have include passive GT 430s. However there are 2 in the collage on an NV slide: a Sparkle and a Zotac.
  • ranger203 - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    I have a Geforce G210 for my media center and it runs blu-rays well. I am looking for a little more umpppff to allow some post processing of other videos. But I paid $35 for my card, and the only way I would replace it was if this one was under $50.

    But.... a quick froogle search found they want to go for around $75. Giga-byte offers a passive cooler, looks pretty bad ass.

    http://www.provantage.com/gigabyte-technology-gv-n...
  • Lolimaster - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    Just buy a HD5550. You shoul've started buying an AMD IGP Mobo, that's enough.

    Nvidia on the low end is just worthless.
  • DMisner - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    I noticed it has the same number of CUDA cores as the GT 240. Would this perform any better or about the same as the GT 240 for Folding@Home?
  • AznBoi36 - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    It's slower than the GT240. Also the GT240 is a full height card, while this one is low profile. There is a reason why this card is called the GT430 and not a GT440.
  • mczak - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    Hmm on page 1 it says roughly same die size as "Juniper GPU in the 5500/5600 families" - that should be redwood. Also, the "GT430 goes up against... GT430..." I guess that should be GT240?
    I'm really wondering how they attach 4 rops to two memory partitions btw. I believe that one quad rop per partition wouldn't really have required a lot of changes over one octo-rop per partition, but either the quad-rop block was split into 2 or it's actually attached to both MCs. Of course, for actual color fillrate, it doesn't really matter if there are 4 or 8 rops - pixel output is limited to 2 per SM anyway.
  • jsbiggs - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    Additional correction:

    On the Power, Temperature, and Noise page, the line "Even at these low wattages where our 1200W power supply isn’t very efficiency". Probably should be "...isn't very efficient". Cheers.
  • Onferno - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    Passively cooled and working as a PhysX card:

    http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1046/pg10/zo...
  • kmitty - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link

    Depends on your definition of 'ultimate'. For me, just looking at it and seeing a fan meant it wasn't my ultimate HTPC card - absolute silence required!
  • mcnabney - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link

    No kidding.

    An ideal HTPC card is:

    1. Silent
    2. Consumes very little power
    3. Can decode all current and pending video format/containers
    4. Fits half-height as well
    5. Has rock-solid driver support
    6. Cheap
    7. Bitstream audio and includes a full version of BluRay software to support it

    This card just doesn't measure up. Ideally the best HTPC card isn't a card, but is actually part of the motherboard.

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