Nvidia GeForce 9300 Launch Roundup :: GeForce 9400 and GeForce 9300 Features

• 16 Stream Processors
• 580MHz Core clock 9400
• 450MHz Core clock 9300
• 1400MHz Shader Clock 9400
• 1200MHz Shader Clock 9300
• DirectX 10.0
• Pixel Shader 4.0
• Vertex Shader 4.0
• CUDA
• PhysX
• Hybrid SLI
• PureVideo HD
• 7.1 LPCM
• HDMI, Dual Link DVI, DP or VGA
• FSB 1333MHz CPUs supported
• Dual Channel DDR2-800MHz memory
• 20 PCI Express lanes 1x 16, 4x 1 Generation 2
• 6 SATA ports
• RAID 0,1, 0+1,5
• Gigabit Ethernet
• USB 12

The GeForce 9400 and 9300 are both based upon the same chip with the only difference being the Core clock and Shader clock speeds of each. The 9400 has a Core/Shader clock of 580/1400MHz, while the 9300 has a Core/Shader clock of 450/1200MHz. They are single chip solutions meaning that they have no need for a Northbridge/Southbridge combination like most Intel or NVIDIA chipsets do.

As an integrated solution, NVIDIA figures that the consumer will not want to pair motherboards of this configuration with $1200 CPUs like the QX9770. The GeForce 9 series motherboards support the latest FSB 1333MHz Intel CPUs including the Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo CPUs from the Yorkfield and Wolfdale lines. The 9 series supports either DDR2-800 or DDR3-1333MHz memory with board partners deciding which they prefer to use.

NVIDIA was the first graphics card maker to fully support DirectX 10 with their GeForce 8800 GTX cards that came out in 2006. Their DirectX 10.0 integrated graphics chipsets entered the market with the GeForce 8200 series on the AMD platform but that has not translated into an Intel chipset with DirectX 10.0 until today. The GeForce 9300/9400 is the first Intel chipset motherboards from them to support DX 10.0 including Pixel Shader 4.0, Vertex Shader 4.0 and unified shaders.

The GeForce 9 series has 20 PCI Express lanes available to it. The motherboard manufacturers can outfit their boards with a PCI Express x16 slot and four x1 slots, as SLI with 2 x8 slots is not supported. Hybrid SLI is supported with the GeForce 8400/8500 cards as they are the closest performance analogue to the 9300/9400. NVIDIA said they will consider enabling Hybrid SLI on their 9400/9500 cards if motherboard manufacturers move to DDR3 memory on their 9300/9400 boards.

PureVideo HD is NVIDIA’S trademarked term for their video acceleration hardware and software on their graphics cards. The GeForce 9600 introduced PureVideo HD which allows the graphics card to support dual stream HD playback, meaning that the director’s commentary can be played back at the same time as the movie or other features such as cast commentary or deleted scenes. The GeForce 9300/9400 integrated graphics support this feature as well as Dynamic Contrast Enhancement that automatically adjusts the contrast of an image.

The GeForce 9 series chipset supports 12 USB 2.0 ports and 6 SATA ports, matching that of the Intel G45 chipset. SATA drives are more important as everything has moved from IDE to SATA including optical drives, and hard disk drives. The NVIDIA chipset supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 modes for hard disks and supports NVIDIA’s MediaShield application for controlling the hard disks. 12 USB ports are standard among the high-end motherboards of today.

Hardware accelerated physics on the GPU was introduced in 2007 by a company called Ageia who marketed their own line of physics cards called PPUs for Physics Processing Units. NVIDIA bought Ageia early this year and have incorporated PhysX into their drivers as an add-on. Enabling PhysX on the 9300 allows the integrated graphics to really outshine the competition in games and applications that support it. Unreal Tournament 3 has a ton of objects flying across the screen with Hardware Physics enabled.