Not that long ago everybody was waiting for Nvidia to release its first DirectX 11 capable graphics card, but things have changed dramatically by now and today Nvidia it's pushing the Fermi architecture at an even lower price point thanks to the GF108 core used in the new GT 430 graphics cards.

If you have been following the recent news that have been coming out from the green camp then you pretty much know what the GF108 is about since this core was also used in the Quadro 600 professional graphics cards that were released last week.

However, for those of you that aren't up to speed with the latest developments, I will tell you the GF108 core is actually derived from the GF104 GPU (that made its entrance with the GTX 460 video cards), so it uses an improved Graphics Processing Cluster (GPC) cluster compared to the original GF100 architecture.

Unfortunately, this is where the good news end, since this card will only use 96 stream processors together with 8 ROP units, so don't expect blazing fast gaming performance from it.

Actually, Nvidia markets this as an update for those people that run integrated graphics and want it to be compared with such graphics solutions while also saying this is more suited for HTPC duty then gaming, although, according to Nvidia's presentation slides, this should be able to handle 1280x1024 resolutions at above 30fps in many recent titles.

Frequency wise, the new core runs at 700MHZ while the DDR3 memory is clocked at 900MHz and communicates with the GPU via a 128bit memory bus.

Nvidia's specifications however end here since the GT 430 doesn't come with a reference design, this card being targeted towards OEMs, although many companies such as Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI or Zotac have built solutions based on the GF108 GPU.



Since Nvidia allowed their partners the freedom of building their own designs, we get a wide range of solutions, the GT 430 being available in all forms and sizes, from half-height to full-height, using either passive or active cooling.

Finally, this GPU also comes with the usual Nvidia technologies such as 3D Vision and PhysX support, the recommended retail price being set at $79 or 79 Euros, depending on what side of the pond are you living.