Galaxy’s GT 430 – Introducing Nvidia’s new GF108 multi-media GPU

Overclocking

Nvidia’s GT 430 overclocks well as does the rest of the Fermi family. Enter Galaxy’s overclocking tool, Xtreme Tuner HD with our settings at stock values:

We were not content to play with Galaxy’s GT 430 at its factory-set clocks and so we pushed it to near its limit. However, this editor has his own set of criteria for overclocking the Galaxy GT 430 further.

• Voltage is kept stock. Not many people are willing to boost voltage on even an inexpensive video card.
• It must be 100% stable and continue to scale with each increase of any clock.
• The fan must not go over its factory-set 52% with stock cooling only; no profiles were created.

Here are our Galaxy GT 430 clocks:

————————— Reference >> Galaxy’s OC >> new OC:

• Graphics Clock – 700 MHz >> 825 MHz
• Processor Clock – 1400 MHz >> 1650 MHz
• Memory Clock – 3600 MHz >> 3680 MHz

An overclock of +125 MHz on the reference Galaxy GT 430’s core – from 700 MHz to 825 MHz with our overclock – brought us some solid performance increases in every case.  However, our DDR3 did not want to overclock very far.  This may change later on if Nvidia decides to allow support for DDR5.

Check out our overclock and during gaming the temperatures which never even went above the 50s C nor did the card make any noticeable noise under full load:

Although we had very little time to fine tune it, we are pretty sure we are near the limit of both our DDR3 and our core.   Each sample is different and your own results may vary considerably from ours.  We did not raise the voltage or the fan and you may be able to get even a higher overclock if you are willing to do this.  Running Furmark it never overheated nor could we hear the GT 430’s VGA cooling fan ramp up.  It stayed cool under extreme stress and it will not drain your wallet with its low 49W TDP specification.

Overclocked Performance

We overclocked our games at the same settings that we used all throughout this review and in most cases, we see good to excellent scaling with clock speeds. In a few cases, the +125 MHz overclock on the core and +20 MHz on the vRAM brings a game from barely playable to playable.

Impressive!  Just like the rest of the Fermi family that we have tested.  We also usually get a much nicer VGA cooling fan solution from Galaxy over the reference cooler, which will keep your overclock cool and quiet. This is a real testimonial to Galaxy’s excellent in-house design.

Power Usage

Power usage is important for many people as a very hot running GPU is not only not “green”, it throws warm air into your room that your air conditioner must work extra hard to compensate for. Of course, these small GPUs put out very little heat and use little energy compared to the GTX 480 or GTX 470.  In fact, the 49 average watts that are required to run GT 430 comes solely from the PCIe slot and there is no additional PCIe power cable connector.  In addition, the Galaxy GT 430 is a very short card – much shorter than the GT 220 which allows it to fit into some very small cases.

Testing with FurMark’s worst case, Hot-as-Hell GPU burning test, we noted that the temperatures never even climbed into the 60sF.  “Pass” with flying colors on the power usage and thermal tests!