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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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.