ASUS ENGT430 GeForce GT 430 1GB DDR3 Video Card Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

After testing the ASUS ENGT430 video card we found ourselves being impressed by the little card. For only $79 we got some impressive features and were shocked that the power consumption levels were so good. We were worried that the GF100 series core on the card would eat up some power, but were shocked to see this card with the GF108 core and 1GB of DDR3 memory was using less power than an ATI Radeon HD 5570 with 512GB of GDDR5 memory. NVIDIA says the TDP on the GT 430 is 49W and that is nice as the card doesn’t require any extra power supply connectors and just a 300W power supply. Most small form factor PCs don’t have a ton of space, big power supplies or extra connectors, so a card like the GT 430 is ideal.

On the performance front the GeForce GT 430 was overall slower than the Radeon HD 5570, but not by too much.
You can find ATI Radeon HD 5570 1GB DDR3 graphics cards on Newegg for
under $70 plus shipping. The Radeon HD 5570 has a couple of things going
for it. The card is faster in gaming and can run three display panels
with ATI Eyefinity technology. That being said, the GeForce GT 430 can
still easily run current game titles at 1280×1024 resolutions albeit
with the image quality settings turned down a bit, it overclocks easily and can also do
Blu-ray 3D like we showed you. It was pretty cool to see a sub $80
graphics card running Blu-ray 3D content on our 120Hz 3D LCD display.

When it comes to pricing the ASUS ENGT430 has an MSRP of $79.99 and features much nicer components than the NVIDIA reference design. ASUS has the build design done right on this card and it even looks good visually! The GeForce GT 430 is designed for HTPC and multimedia PC use and those users should find the card’s HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs to be plenty. Remember, if you want to play Blu-ray 3D content that you have to use the DVI header as that is the only supported connector at this time.

Legit Bottom Line: The NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 is an intriguing little card that is a great budget low resolution gaming card, but is more aimed at HTPC or digital media PC use.