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
The Apple Story
NVIDIA is dedicated to competing with Intel on all fronts and it just took the battle to Intel's most prized OEM: Apple.
Yesterday Apple announced that instead of moving to G45M for the MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, it would be using NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M - a mobile variant of the desktop chipset we're talking about today. Not only did Apple shun G45, but it also pointed out that the GeForce 9400M is up to 5x faster than Intel's integrated graphics - a line that's straight from NVIDIA:
We'll deal with whether or not those claims are true momentarily, but make no mistake - this needs to be a wakeup call for Intel. Apple is often looked to as an OEM that the PC OEMs emulate, and abandoning G45 in favor of NVIDIA's chipset can't bode well for the example Apple is setting for its competition. As we mentioned in our G45 review, it's simply not enough. Intel should be doing a lot better, and kudos to NVIDIA for capitalizing on Intel's errors.
Apple did a tremendous amount of marketing for NVIDIA at its launch yesterday and continues to do so on its own website:
NVIDIA could not have timed the launch of its GeForce 9300/9400 chipsets any better, and without a doubt Apple played a huge role in determining when to launch this chipset. Apple tends to like exclusives and as the first to showcase a GeForce 9400M, it's quite happy.
The repercussions of Apple's NVIDIA switch have yet to be seen but it's a bold move by NVIDIA.
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Badkarma - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Why would it be impossible to stream media? Most media streams are only a fraction of 100Mbit ethernet, even a full Blu-ray disc rarely hits 20+Mbit. The CPU usage charts for network traffic in this review are for full thoroughput tests, the NIC will never come close to pushing that much traffic when streaming media.Zstream - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
I stream 300mbs/sec all the time on my HTPC with my gig Intel nic. I guess you never streamed across multiple devices. It is called VOD, if you do not believe me look at the newest tivo.R3MF - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Is this the chipset that nvidia is supposed to have worked with Via on to ensure Nano support?A HP mininote v2 using Nano and this mGPU would be an awesome product that would take a dump on every other netbook from a great height!
Hlafordlaes - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
That's my understanding, too. I was wondering what the delay was caused by, now my guess is that Apple wanted the exclusive for launch. Let's hope some new mini-ITX 2.0 Nano boards with this chipset will appear soon.R3MF - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
A lot of netbook newsites are reporting drastic price cuts in the mininote 2133, which is fueling speculation that a v2 may be due out soon.As it happens; there is already a petition requesting HP use the Nano + MCP79 combo in a future v2 mininote:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mininote/petition.ht...">http://www.petitiononline.com/mininote/petition.ht...
R3MF - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
This chipset in ULV form is the one being used in the new MacbookAir, so there is no reason why it couldn't be used in netbooks like the HP Mininote, as adequately demonstrated in the power consumption page of this preview.R3MF - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
Do you have any thoughts or speculations you would like to share on whether this is the fabled Via Nano integrated chipset?It would be big news for those of us awaiting a powerful HP mininote v2..........