Nvidia Unveils GeForce GT430 Card For Home Entertainment

Nvidia on Monday released its GeForce GT430 graphics card, which the chipmaker hopes will move it closer to its goal of capturing a larger share of the low-end GPU market.

The GeForce GT 430 uses the 40-nm GPU, code-named GF108, to increase the performance of photo and video editing, as well as Blu-ray 3D. It's also designed to handle GPU-accelerated Web browsers and Web content, according to Nvidia.

A number of manufacturers have built cards for the new model, including ASL, ASUS, Colorful, ECS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, Jetway, KFA2, Leadtek, MSI, Palit, Point of View, PNY, Sparkle, Zotac

The GeForce GT430 is priced at $79 and will compete with the acclaimed AMD Radeon HD 5570 in the entry-level, commercial space of the home theater personal computer (HTPC). As a sub-$100 graphics card, the GT430 isn't designed for the most demanding performance graphics, but Nvidia is pitching it as an affordable, low-cost, low-heat option for home theater with 3-D Blu-Ray and multi-monitor support.

Nvidia is calling the GeForce GT430 "a major step up" from integrated GPUs found in many current desktop and notebook PCs. Alongside the allure of digital content in full 3D, Nvidia is emphasizing gaming and display compatibility for those looking to unify their home entertainment center.

Next: The Details Of the GeForce GT430

The GT 430 has 585 million transistors built on a 40-nm process, with a thermal design profile of 49 Watts, 16 texture units, and 4 ROP. The expanded memory bandwidth from 96 CUDA cores enables advanced visualization technology from Nvidia's parallel computing architecture.

The GT430 also features Windows DirectX 11 support and an additional 1GB of DDR3 memory and a GPU running at 1.4-GHz speed.

The dual-link DVI-I port, HDMI 1.4a port, and a 15-pin analog VGA port offer multiple connection and display options without the need for an auxiliary power supply connector.