14 DAY TRIAL // Since NVIDIA was bound to bring out the GeForce GT 430 sooner or later, it is not exactly surprising that Inno3D has now officially announced its own version, a low profile video controller set to cost a fair bit less than $100.
While NVIDIA has been offering the enthusiast-grade GTX 470/480 and the mainstream GTX 460 and GTS 450 for quite a while now, it took longer for an actual lower-end 400-series card to show up on the market.
The GT 430 is NVIDIA's least expensive DirectX 11 video board yet and, like all of its 400 Series siblings, is based on the Fermi architecture.
This technology has already spawned the GF100, GF104 and GF106 graphics processing units, all of them based on the 40nm manufacturing process.
The main feature of these GPUs, besides the obvious performance superiority compared to previous-generation chips, is their support for DirectX 11.
The GT 430 is powered by the GF108, which is weaker that its siblings, of course, but also quite a bit more affordable and less power-hungry.
Inno3D's product is a low profile video controller, so it will likely end up as part of HTPCs or other small form factor systems.
96 CUDA cores are present, as is 1GB of DDR3 memory and a memory interface of 128 bits.
The graphics processor itself has a clock speed of 700 MHz, while the shaders and memory run at 1,400 MHz and 1,333 MHz, respectively.
Other specifications include a single-slot active cooler with one fan and three video outputs, namely Dvi, D-Sub and HDMI.
Finally, the board supposedly sells for $79, which is a fair bit under $100 and should make it quite suited for the entry-level market.
What remains to be seen is how this particular video card can deal with competition from the likes of Club 3D and ASUS.