The IGP Chronicles Part 3: NVIDIA's GeForce 9300
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on October 15, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
A New Graphics Core
With a smaller manufacturing process, NVIDIA could cram more into the GeForce 9300. While the 80nm GeForce 8200 and 8300 featured 8 SPs, the GeForce 9300 and 9400 have twice that: 16 stream processors. Compared to discrete cards this isn't much of course; the table below shows how the GeForce 9300 stacks up to NVIDIA's own discrete solutions:
| NVIDIA GeForce 9300 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 | NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT | NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO | NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT | NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT | |
| Shader Processors | 16 | 192 | 112 |
96 |
32 | 16 |
| Core Clock | 450MHz | 576MHz | 600MHz | 550MHz | 550MHz | 550MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1.2GHz | 1.242GHz | 1.5GHz |
1.375GHz |
1.4GHz | 1.35GHz |
Yeah, integrated graphics still pretty much sucks for any real gaming. What we want is at least 9500 GT class of performance, and what we're getting is something below a 9400 GT (once you factor in memory bandwidth limitations). Compared to other IGPs however, NVIDIA has finally closed the gap between itself and AMD's 780G. Look at the specs:
| AMD 790GX | AMD 780G | Intel G45 | Intel G35 | NVIDIA GeForce 9400 | NVIDIA GeForce 9300 | NVIDIA GeForce 8300 | NVIDIA GeForce 8200 | |
| Graphics | Radeon HD 3300 | Radeon HD 3200 | GMA X4500 |
GMA X3500 |
GeForce 9400 mGPU | GeForce 9300 mGPU | GeForce 8300 mGPU | GeForce 8200 mGPU |
| Core Clock | 700MHz | 500MHz | 800MHz | 667MHz | 580MHz Core / 1.4GHz Shader | 450MHz Core / 1.2GHz Shader | 500MHz Core / 1.5GHz Shader |
500MHz Core / 1.2GHz Shader |
| Shader Processors | 8 (5-way) | 8 (5-way) | 10 |
8 |
16 | 16 | 8 | 8 |
| Full H.264/VC-1/MPEG-2 HW Decode | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
While AMD can crank through a peak of 40 instructions per clock, that's very much a best case scenario figure. NVIDIA should have no problems retiring 16 instructions per clock and with its SPs running at 2.4x the speed of AMD's in the 780G, NVIDIA should not only be able to equal AMD's performance but surpass it in most games.
As we saw with the GeForce 8200 and 8300 series, the only difference between the 9300 and 9400 are clock speeds (450MHz/1.2GHz vs. 580MHz/1.4GHz). And just as we saw with the GeForce 8200/8300, we had no problems overclocking our GeForce 9300 to 9400 clock speeds. The 9300 will be the chipset to look at; the 9400 is simply a way of getting more money out of the consumer.
Dual-Link DVI is supported so 2560x1600 is available... but only if the board manufacturer supports it. The ASUS board we tested with does not support DL DVI unfortunately. DisplayPort and standard VGA are also supported, making for a very nice array of output options on the I/O plane:
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Geforce9300 - Friday, January 23, 2009 - link
Hi guys;Personally, I think Apple is buying all of these chipsets NVidia can make for the moment...
Where I live, in Belgium, only 3 mobos are available with this chipset: The Asus, the Gigabyte, and now there's a new one from DFI: I'ts called the DFI LANPARTY Junior GF9400-T2RS .
So only 3 mobo's... it's what makes me think Apple is eating most of these chipsets right now.
Steve, leave one for me please if you will...
And take care of your health.
Has anyone seen another mobo?
Mr. Anand, any update since the test? Is there a revision 2 which solves the latency problem and so on?
I would like to buy one... I have a low power Pentium 4 631 'Cedar Mill' lying here, and I have everything except a mobo.
So I am kind of waiting to see the stated issues resolved in a certain mobo before buying one.
I was dissapointed by the G45's GPU, so I would prefer to buy an NVidia chipset...
I like to see NVidia being the leader in INtel-mainstream chipsets again!
Thumbs up for NVidia!
Cheers;
Carl
lordbob99 - Thursday, January 29, 2009 - link
I'm currently seeing 7 available Nvidia GeForce 9x00 based motherboards available over at Newegg.com - XFX, Asus, Zotac, MSI, DFI, Gigabyte, and EVGA.Link's not working here for me, but you can paste in: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...=&Sp...
I've been thinking about picking one of these up for a while, but was hoping for an update from anandtech on whether the problems/kinks they mentioned have been worked out yet.
sergev - Friday, January 2, 2009 - link
You say that you tried to keep every part of the system the same as much as possible. Why is it then that you choose a 140 Watt AMD processor and a 95 Watt Intel processor and say that the nvidia 9300/9400 is using less energy than the AMD chipsets?You should have gone with something more the same like a 65 watt core 2 duo and a 65 watt athlon 64x2. That way you could be sure that you have honest results. And performance wise it is ofcourse obvious that the intel systems should perform better because of the ridiculously high end processor. Now there is no way of telling wich one is using less energy!
sidewinderx2 - Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - link
The Asus N10J netbook already has an atom paired with a 9300M GS...dragones - Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...XavierJohn - Monday, October 27, 2008 - link
What is the ship date?Noone seems to be carrying the 9200 or the 9300 motherboards.
aapocketz - Monday, October 27, 2008 - link
I would be interested to know when these motherboards are available, noone is selling them. I am particularly interested in the MSI board.When will more detailed review of these boards be available?
JonnyDough - Monday, October 20, 2008 - link
What we could use is this in a 939/478 form factor with support for both DDR and DDR2 ram. There are a lot of Athlons and P4s out there still with motherboards that have died. With few choices on the market, an powerful and cheap integrated solution would be a great option for old systems. I would still build an HTPC out of my older X2s.XavierJohn - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
It is interesting in this article one person has the DTC 9.8 and the other Pioneer Elite.I currently have Pioneer Elite and was thinking about DTC 9.8. For an HTPC use is the upgrade worth it?
Is it also worth upgrading from 8200 AMD to 9400 Intel for an HTPC? From my understanding, it is not.
Gary Key - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
I would upgrade from the VSX-94THX to the DTC 9.8 if I could. ;) From a HTPC perspective, no real reason to upgrade from the 8200 to the 9300.