The focus may have shifted to AMD recently, but that doesn't mean that all is quiet in NVIDIA's camp. The graphics-card maker has plans to continue fleshing out its low-end offerings with new Fermi-based cards, and it looks like a few have already appeared at retailers.
The GT 430 is set to launch later this month to replace the ageing GTS 250 in the entry-level arena. Based on the same GF106 architecture as the GTS 450, the GPU will be clocked at 700MHz, while the 96 CUDA cores will tick along at 1,400MHz. The cards will most likely be equipped with 1GB DDR3 set to 800MHz over a 128-bit bus, though there are rumours of a GDDR5 version as well. As for outputs, the GT 430 will have the normal trio of DVI, HDMI and VGA on board.
The first appearance was reported on the EVGA forums where a Best Buy employee received a shipment that was immediately put on display, despite an October 10 release date. Shortly afterwards, a poster on the same forum reported buying a Galaxy branded card from a San Francisco Best Buy for $110 (£86 inc VAT).
Meanwhile, a similar card from Gigabyte has shown up at a Austrian e-tailer. While details are slim, the basic specs seem to line-up with what we already know about the card. The model is listed as an overclocked variant, though frequencies aren't given, meaning that we don't have any indication how hard the GPU has been pushed. Interestingly, this model has a sticker price of only €72.62 inc VAT (£63), which is significantly less than the Best Buy cards. However, retail prices are usually a lot higher than specialist e-tailers, so this shouldn't be too much of a surprise.
Based on these appearances, it looks like the GT 430 is well on its way to a full retail-release very soon. We'll be sure to bring you the full details as soon as we get one of the GPUs on our test bench.
