NVIDIA's GeForce GT 430: The Next HTPC King?
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on October 11, 2010 9:00 AM ESTFor the purpose of HTPC reviews (in particular, HQV benchmarking for discrete GPUs), we have set up a dedicated testbed with the following configuration. Considering that we will soon be having Sandy Bridge HTPCs, we have specifically tagged this as the Fall 2010 HTPC testbed.
| Fall 2010 HTPC Benchmarking Testbed Setup | |
| Processor | Intel i5-680 CPU - 3.60GHz, 4MB Cache |
| Motherboard | Asus P7H55D-M EVO |
| OS Hard Drive | Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB |
| Secondary Drive | Kingston SSDNow 128GB |
| Memory | G.SKILL ECO Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) F3-10666CL7D-4GBECO CAS 7-7-7-21 |
| Video Cards | Various |
| Optical Drives | ASUS 8X Blu-ray Drive Model BC-08B1ST |
| Case | Antec VERIS Fusion Remote Max |
| Power Supply | Antec TruePower New TP-550 550W |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Ultimate x64 |
| . | |
All the above components were chosen keeping extensibility in mind. The Clarkdale CPU allows us to test the Intel HD Graphics, and the PCI-E 2.0 x 16 slot can take in any HTPC oriented graphics card from ATI or nVidia. We got the fastest dual core Clarkdale processor and paired it with one of the well-reviewed LGA1156 motherboards from Asus. With USB 3.0 and eSATA support, transferring information to and from our SFF HTPCs such as the ASRock Vision 3D and Core 100 was a cinch. Keeping hard drive duties is the Seagate Barracuda XT, which strikes a fine balance between speed, power consumption and quietness. A SSD drive from Kingston was thrown in to enable us to use for some benchmarking programs we will cover in some future articles.
The G-Skill ECO series DDR3 modules fit in perfectly with the rest of the testbed. Low voltage requirements ensured that the DIMMs never heated up despite being fast and responsive. Asus was also kind enough to provide a Blu-Ray drive (internal module) which we used to play the HQV BR disc / test bitstreaming. A big chassis from Antec was chosen despite the testbed motherboard being micro-ATX. This was done in order to accommodate ATX motherboards in the future, if made necessary. The 550W Antec power supply also ensures that we can evaluate cards requiring external power connectors for HTPC purposes.
Each hardware configuration has an associated OS image which was created / restored as necessary using Clonezilla. This ensures that we do not end up with conflicting drivers while evaluating GPUs from different companies on the same base testbed. Our first evaluation using the above testbed setup was HQV benchmarking for the GT 430 and Radeon HD 5570. Read on for the results from our exercise.
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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.