Table of Contents:
• 700MHz Core Clock speed
• 1400MHz Shader Clock Speed
• 1800MHz Memory Clock speed
• 1 GPC
• 2 Streaming Multiprocessors
• 2 Frame buffer partitions
• four ROPs
• 96 CUDA Cores
• CUDA
• PhysX
• 3D Vision
• 40nm process technology
• 585 million transistors
• 128-bit memory bandwidth
• 11.2 Gigatexels/second texture filtering rate
• 1024MB DDR3
• 128KB L2 Cache
• 28.8GB/second memory bandwidth
The ASUS ENGT430 card is based upon NVIDIA’s newest chip, the GF 108. Much like the GF106 chip before it is a new chip with 585 million transistors and is manufactured using TSMC’s 40nm production silicon. The first member of the Fermi family had over 3 billion transistors and had 448 CUDA cores, separated into 4 Graphics Processing clusters each with 4 or 3 Shader Multiprocessors with 32 CUDA cores in each SM.
The GF104 changed the structure of the SM to 48. The second chip on that family the GF106 that the GTS 450 is based off has 192 CUDA cores with one GPC four SMs with 48 CUDA cores each. Today’s card has a single GPC with two Streaming Multiprocessors with 48 CUDA cores each. There is also half a ROP partition with 4 ROPs and 16 Texturing units. What’s interesting about this is this is basically half a GTS 450 with half the specs.
The GT 430 is meant to be an upgrade for the casual and mainstream gamer that is not satisfied with its integrated graphics built into their new Core i7-661 CPU but beyond that it is targeted for the HTPC market for video and picture editing. The ASUS ENGT 430 is a half-height card easily fitting into the low-profile HTPC cases on the market. One of the important things that this chip is targeted for is
The GeForce GT430 supports 3D output to any compatible large screen television through the HDMI 1.4 interface, which is the most common TV interface today. The GT 430 can provide full 1080p images at bitrates up to 65Mbps and the graphics engine on the card can accelerate Blu-Ray 3D movies in hardware. The latest set of drivers from NVIDIA also bring high-definition lossless surround sound support to the Fermi architecture with the GT 430 supporting 24-bit multi-channel audio up to 192KHz and lossless DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD audio bit streaming.
DirectX 11 is important going forward as many game developers are using this API to enable highly complex models using Tessellation and Displacement mapping to save on bandwidth. The GF100 chip had 15 PolyMorph engines, which is its own Tessellation unit. The new GF108 chip has two PolyMorph engines, which should provide up to twice the geometry power of the last generation GT220 in this space. The GT430 supports all of the features of DirectX 11 and is the lowest end of the Fermi spectrum to date. NVIDIA estimates this card to retail at around $79, but only 10% of the cards sold will be through the retailers/etailers that NVIDIA traditionally uses, with more than 90% of the sales coming from the OEM market in new computer systems.
One thing that differentiates ASUS motherboards is their Xtreme Design feature like Solid Capacitors, and EZ DIMM installation. They have carried that over to the new GeForce GTS 430 card with features like the ASUS Dust-proof fan, ASUS GPU Guard, Doubled over-current protection, EMI protection, Smart Doctor, and GamerOSD.
The traditional cooling fan has a gap between the fan blade and the hub. Dust collects on the fan hub as the dust collects on it. If you have ever opened a computer up and found dust on the graphics card you have witnessed this first hand. ASUS has sealed the fan area twice, making it virtually dust-proof. This extends the graphics cards lifespan by up to 25% longer than traditional video cards without the dust-free protection.
GPU Guard doubles the structural reinforcement of the card. If you have ever had a heavy video card like the HD 5970 or GeForce GTX480 crack due to the weight of the card forcing the card to bend and crack on a case this solves the problem. Doubling the structural reinforcement on the card allows for ease of mind when installing a heavy video card on a system compared to without it.
ASUS has double over-current protection for risk-free computing. Electro-Static Discharge (ESD) is a problem with modern computing and especially on video cards as you can short out the card with it. ASUS has Fuse protection on their GT430 card, which doubles the protection against ESD. Modern cards have over-current protection, which results on damage to the GPU if it malfunctions, the Fuse on the DirectCU card will provide a second layer of protection. The card also has an EMI shield to provide less radiation output than without it by 66%.
