NVIDIA today released an entry level video chipset, the GeForce GT 430. The design is targeted at home theater computers where video playback support is more important than raw 3D performance. With that focus, the chipset now supports HDMI with passthrough audio. It can output HDMI 1.4a for full 3D video along with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio surround sound.
There is also support for DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4 graphics; and GPGPU processing like CUDA, PhysX and OpenCL.
NVIDIA saved on costs by having only 96 processing cores, a 700MHz main clock speed and 800MHz or 900MHz DDR3 memory. Every card has 1GB of memory on a 128-bit memory bus.
The design will cost just $79 in a basic configuration. ASUS, EVGA, MSI and others are shipping cards today, while computer builders should also start using the GT 430 in systems soon.