Nvidia today officially announced the release of another GPU for the manistream market, the GeForce GT 430. The GeForce GT 430 is the first mainstream Fermi GPU for the PC using the same Fermi architecture in the GTS 450, GTX 460, GTX470 and GTX 480. The Fermi architecture was designed to run next generation DX11 titles and Blu-Ray 3D.

The GeForce GT 430 is considered as the replacement of the GTS 240 GPU. The 40nm GPU is clocked at 700MHz, comes with 96 Cude cores 2GB ddr3 memory running at 1333 Mhz and a 128-bit memory interface. The result is a memory bandwidth of 28.8 GB/sec and a Texture Fill Rate of 5.6 billion/sec.

GeForce GT 430 is specifically designed to power today?s digital media PCs, providing enough power for photo and video editing, Blu-ray 3D, mainstream gaming, and the next generation of GPU-accelerated Web browsers. The card also supports CUDA Technology, PhysX technology and comes equipped with an HDMI 1.4 output.

Nvidia claims that compared to the GT240, the new GT430 scores approximately 1200 points higher in the Vantage (Pro ) benchmark and also is more powerfull in popular games such as "Crysis" and "Lost Planet."

Nvidia's partners including Asus, Inno3D, Gigabyte and more are expected to release their GT430-based solutions today.

New Release 260 Driver

Nvidia also today released the second driver from its new Release 260 family of drivers. This newest version of Release 260 adds support for the new Fermi-based GeForce GT 430 GPU. Version 260.89 also includes several bug fixes from the earlier beta release and adds SLI support for some of the latest PC gaming titles including Dead Rising 2 and City of Heroes: Going Rogue.

The new version 260.89 can be downloaded here.

New in Release 260.89 Beta

New GPU Support

* Adds support for the newly released GeForce GT 430 GPU.

Performance

* Increases performance for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. v258.96 WHQL drivers. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

GeForce GTX 480:
+ Up to 10% in StarCraft II (2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF Ultra)
+ Up to 14% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 16% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI - 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 6% in Aliens vs. Predator (SLI ? 1920x1200 noAA - Tessellation on)

GeForce GTX 460:
+ Up to 19% in StarCraft II (SLI - 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF Ultra)
+ Up to 15% in Battlefield Bad Company 2 (SLI - 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 12% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (2560x1600 noAA)
+ Up to 9% in Aliens vs. Predator (1680x1050 4xAA/16xAF - Tessellation on)
+ Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (1680x1050 noAA - Tessellation on)
+ Up to 11% in Dirt 2 (SLI ? 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 12% in Crysis:Warhead (SLI - 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF Gamer)
+ Up to 13% in Far Cry 2 (2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF) + Up to 12% in H.A.W.X (SLI - 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF SSAO Very High)
+ Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 22% in Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (1920x1200 noAA)
+ Up to 5% in 3DMark Vantage (Extreme Preset)

HD Audio

* Upgrades HD Audio driver to version 1.1.9.0.

Installation

* New driver installer with enhanced user interface and new Express and Custom installation options.
o Express - one-click installation
o Custom - customized installation
+ Option to perform a clean installation (completely removes older drivers from your system prior to installing the new driver).
+ Option to choose which driver components (ie. PhysX or 3D Vision) to install.

o Improved installation time for multi-GPU PCs.

NVIDIA SLI

* Adds or enhances SLI profiles for the following PC games:
o City of Heroes: Going Rogue
o Alien Swarm
o Dead Rising 2
o Front Mission Evolved
o Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days
o LEGO: Harry Potter

Other Improvements

* Adds support for OpenGL 4.1 for GeForce 400 series GPUs.
* Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0514.
* Includes numerous bug fixes.


Additional Information:

* Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5.
* Supports GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with Adobe Flash 10.1.
* Supports the new version of MotionDSP's video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output.
* Supports OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
* Supports OpenGL 3.3 for GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
* Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology* on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.
* Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software.