14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA just a short while ago unleashes its entry-level Fermi card and, of course, its partners went ahead and released their own versions, with Lantic now deciding to join the crowd, only with a model that is not exactly similar to those of its competitors.
The GT 430 is now the low-end offering based on the Fermi architecture, the GF108 graphics processing unit in this case.
It is the younger sibling to the enthusiast-level GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480, the performance-grade GTX 460 and the mainstream GTS 450.
Lantic, of course, more or less reshaped the card according to its own vision and did not even stick to the same design convention as its competitors.
While other companies gave the product a low profile PCB (printed circuit board) and an active cooler, Lantic went in what can be seen as the opposite direction.
Thus it came to pass that its GeForce GT 430 ended up with not just a full-height PCB, but also a passive cooler, bringing the TDP as low as 49W.
The actual specifications, on the other hand, are not exactly different from those of all the other GT 430 so far revealed.
There are 96 CUDA cores, a memory interface of 128 bits, 1 GB of DDR3 VRAM and the obligatory DVI, D-Sub and HDMI outputs.
As for clock speeds, the GPU works at 700 MHz, the shaders at 1,400 MHz and the memory at the same frequency of 1,400 MHz.
As it stands, this video controller can be seen as one of the less common versions of NVIDIA's new low-cost board, though the card may or may not prove a bit more expensive than some of the others so far made public.
Nevertheless, its exact price tag should still stay either within or below the $80-$100 range.