As we have already mentioned in our articles for Nvidia's GT 430 series of graphics card, these cards should be mainly considered as a graphics card for HTPCs. The $80 GT 430 cannot compete with AMD's offerings at this price range (5570 and 5670) in gaming performance, so Nvidia tried to present it as a capable graphics solution for the HTPC environment, compact in size, future-proof with an HDMI 1.4a port on board and also quiet enough during operation.

In a highly populated market of GT 430 graphics cards, Gigabyte has added some extra features to its implementation. The GV-N430OC-1G comes slightly pre-overclocked and it is equipped with a more efficient cooler, in order to cope with the increased clocks of the shaders and the GPU. The result was an slightly higher overclocking margin compared to a stock GT 430 card, as well as some extra FPS (3~5) while playing games at resolutions lower than 1680 x 1024. After than point and as you increase the quality settings of a game, Gigabyte's overclocking will not help so don't expect to see any higher performance compared to a stock GT 430.

Gigabyte has also included a smaller backplate for the card, which could be very useful if you consider installing the card into a low profile HTPC box.

The Gigabyte GV-N430OC-1G is an affordable graphics card for HTPCs. It offers slightly more than the entry-level gaming performance of a stock GT 430, a more efficient cooling system, an HDMI 1.4a output for 3D playback and gaming (if you have Nvidia's 3D Vision kit), and enhanced and accelerated media playback by CUDA.