14 DAY TRIAL // The NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 card is now up and running and Sparkle was quick in matching its rivals' offers, only it seems to have gone a step beyond what other video card makers did and actually brought forth models with 2 GB of memory.
The Fermi architecture lies at the basis of all of NVIDIA's 400 Series graphics adapters, as all GF GPUs are based on it.
The latest such graphics processing unit to have been developed by the Santa Clara, California-based hardware maker is the GF108.
This GPU is, of course, below the enthusiast-grade GF100, the capable GF104 and the mainstream GF106 in terms of performance.
Of course, this is expected, considering that the GeForce GT 430 is, in fact, aimed at the low-end market, particularly the segment of HTPCs and other small form factor systems.
It is no surprise that Sparkle joined the GT 430 bandwagon early, but what may come across as unusual is that its collection of cards includes boards with 2 GB of memory.
The boards all come with 96 CUDA cores and memory interfaces of 128 bits, as well as CRT, DVI and HDMI video outputs.
It should probably be noted that two of the cards feature a so-called 'true' one-slot design, though they have room for just the DVI and HDMI ports.
All of them use low profile PCBs (printed circuit boards) and have clock speeds of 700 MHz for the GPU and 1,400 MHz for the shaders.
What's more, the 1 GB or 2 GB of memory operate at either 1,600 MHz or 1,800 MHz, depending on model.
Finally, the cards are divided into passively-cooled and actively-cooled versions. They can all be seen in detail on the company's website and, while their prices were not specifically mentioned, they likely stay within the sub-$100 range.