NVIDIA's GeForce GT 430: The Next HTPC King?
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on October 11, 2010 9:00 AM ESTThe GT 430 is not as bad a HTPC card as the HQV benchmarks might lead one to believe. It is the first sub-$100 component to enable HDMI 1.4a and playback of all 3D formats. In addition, users can also expect 3DTV Play to enable them to play 3D games on a TV when NVIDIA releases that software package in the future. However, the suitability of the GT 430 for gaming purposes is covered elsewhere in this piece. From a HTPC perspective, it enables cutting-edge technology without any sort of price premium.
For a consumer interested in the 3D ecosystem, the GT 430 is definitely a better option than the similarly priced HD 5570. The GT 430 also brings the latest and greatest of VP4 to the table. This includes full MVC decode acceleration enabling hassle free playback of 3D Blu-Rays. The GPU also scored a perfect 100% in our media streamer test suite, and had no issues with bitstreaming HD audio of any kind. Flash acceleration works very well and sites such as YouTube and Hulu benefit handsomely. Silverlight also utilizes GPU acceleration. Netflix is able to take advantage of the same.
NVIDIA's 3D TV Demo Room
3D works as advertised, and I had the opportunity to simultaneously experience 3D and HD audio bitstreaming at the nVidia Santa Clara HQ demo room. More than the 3D videos, I was impressed by the stereoscopic photographs slideshow on the 3D TV enabled by the GT 430. They also had on display some 3D cameras and camcorders. With a 5 year history of developing for the 3D ecosystem, it finally looks like nVidia's efforts are beginning to bear fruit. Now, if only we could find some way to get rid of those glasses....
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n9ntje - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
Sad to see Nvidia doesn't live up to expectations, while they want us to believe that they have a perfect HTPC card, it isn't.To most people, image quality counts. 3D is still a niche.
IceDread - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
Yeap, it's always best if the competition is even, gives us the best prices.medi01 - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
I am afraid market is too slow to react to nVidia having worse products, AMD has nowhere near market share that it deserves to have.We can't expect one player to dominate all the time. So when the underdog creates superior products, it should benefit from it. But this is not the case in GPU market, unfortunatelly, as nVidia still keeps much bigger market share, than AMD.
dnd728 - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
I've tried quite a few ATI/AMD cards over the years, including the latest 5000 series, and to date not a single one of them worked right, i.e. without keep crashing Windows.It could be one reason.
electroju - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
I agree and I have also used ATI and AMD graphics over the years. AMD graphics writes the worst software or drivers from a reputable company. I go with nVidia because I care for reliability and stability. I do not mind spending money on nVidia graphics because the money goes towards software development. The cost of AMD graphics is too low to provide enough for software development.Zoomer - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
I have personally found nvidia cards to have inferior hardware quality. This was very evident from the time when quality dacs for vga mattered, and nvidia cards absolutely sucked at that. Further suboptimal decisions made their cards meh.Software wise, I thought nvidia's software quality peaked around the time of the detonators.
AmdInside - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
DACs depended on the maker of the card. Quadro NVS cards which were made by NVIDIA were regarding as having excellent 2D image quality over analog display. Sadly a lot of NVIDIA partners used cheap DACs on some of their cards.mentatstrategy - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - link
Nvidia Fanboi: I have used ati cards and they suck!ATI Fanboi: I have used nvidia cards and they suck!
heflys - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
Hmmm....Haven't had a problem with ATi/AMD drivers thus far.duploxxx - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
perhaps you need to read a bit more and see how many 1000's have been recently been affected by this awesome nvidia reliability and stability when they all had to throw away there graphic cards and laptops.