After seeing some spectacular competition between NVIDIA and AMD at the performance thru high-end segments, one can't escape the feeling that things are unspectacular in the lower segments, though market forces dictate that it is this block of segments, ranging from a $60 price-point, all the way to $199, that makes the most sales volumes for GPU designers. Hence this is one of the most decisive segments. As you start from a sub-$100 price point and go towards $199, you'll find just how performance per Dollar is king. But as you move down somewhere around the $75 price point towards lower segments, you'll find how features becomes an increasingly decisive factor compared to just performance. The GeForce GT 430 is at that crucial crossroads.

The GeForce GT 430 inherits a rich feature-set from its pedigree. It supports the latest graphics APIs, such as DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.x; supports close to every GPU compute technology including NVIDIA's popular CUDA technology, as well as open standards such as OpenCL and DirectCompute 5.0. Media acceleration is enhanced by DXVA2, support for the latest HD video standards, including Blu-ray 3D, and an HDMI audio device that provides 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit output with Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS.

When it comes to performance, the GeForce GT 430 has shown that it can let you play most games, but at lower resolutions (720p and below). Most DirectX 10 and older games run playable at these resolutions. With DirectX 11 games, it begins to get bogged down, and so you need to lower the resolution and level of detail settings further. The GeForce GT 430 finds market competition from AMD's Radeon HD 5500 series GPUs. The HD 5570 is priced around the same (starts at $70), but performs 20% better overall. One can expect the GT 430 to become more affordabe in the near future, because the way this card is designed, suggests that there is some room left for viable price-cuts. The GT 430 also finds competition from the previous generation GT 220 GPU, because it's 20% slower, while being $25 cheaper.

To squeeze the most performance, the GT 430 in Zotac's implementation has shown very good overclocking potential. One can't go wrong with 19% GPU and 18% memory overclock, which results in up to 18% increase in performance. Zotac's design can help here, because unlike other manufacturers who are using a single slot, low-profile heatsink, Zotac's full-height PCB allows for a larger cooler, though the fan noise levels don't please us. Zotac could have easily used a larger but slower fan by eating into the heatsink's fins a little, and ended up with a quieter solution. Overall, this is the NVIDIA card to buy to graduate over integrated graphics, if you need DirectX 11. It offers limitless merit as far as features go, but gaming is restricted to 720p, which isn't bad. Some game consoles give you that resolution.