ASUS ENGT430 GeForce GT 430 1GB DDR3 Video Card Review

Blu-ray 3D Playback Testing

ASUS and NVIDIA sent us presentations that talked about how the GeForce GT 430 could run Blu-ray 3D content, so we figured what the heck and gave it a quick look. We hooked up the ASUS ENGT430 video card into our HTPC and tried it out on an ASUS VG236 3D 120Hz LCD monitor that comes with an NVIDIA 3D Vision bundle kit.

We then got our hands on My Bloody Valentine 3D (just came out on 10-5-2010) and the Walt Disney Digital Blu-ray 3D showcase disc for Blu-Ray 3D testing.

We used CyberLink PowerDVD 10 Mark II Ultra Version 10.0.2113.51 for testing as you must use a player that supports Blu-ray 3D content and PowerDVD 10 does if you have the latest patch installed. We found that the ASUS ENGT430 does a great job with Blu-ray 3D content and was able to play the movies back just fine. In some scenes of My Bloody Valentine we noticed that the video stream was reaching 52Mbps! NVIDIA says the GeForce GT 430 can handle up to 65Mbps, so we still have some room left in the card that we weren’t able to reach. Our HTPC test system ran an AMD Athlon II 645 processor and we noticed that the CPU load with the GeForce GT 430 in the system was on average 14% with a normal Blu-ray and 22% with a Blu-ray 3D. If you look at the screen capture above with the system running a Blu-ray in 2D that the GPU was only at 14% load, but the video engine was at 70% load. The movie was playing, but won’t show up in the player when taking a screen shot like this due to good old HDCP settings.