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
Blu-ray Power Consumption
Since we're dealing with an Intel platform from NVIDIA, the Cool'n'Quiet issues we mentioned in our previous article don't apply here. You simply get the best combination of low CPU utilization and very low power consumption when watching HD content:
So far so good; we don't have any HDMI incompatibilities, no repeater issues to report, the GeForce 9300 just worked in all of our home theater setups. But how about the more niche features?
8-channel LPCM support comes natively with the GeForce 9300 and like on the Radeon HD 4xxx series, it just works. NVIDIA's platform drivers include an HDMI audio driver that, once installed, allows you to configure your audio output as 2, 6 or 8 channels. Of course bitstreaming both Dolby Digital and DTS audio is supported. Unfortunately, as we've mentioned before, there is no support for bitstreaming Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA; you'll need to wait until sometime next year before you get full support there.
As we mentioned in our last article, proper 24Hz refresh rate support is particularly useful for playing back 24 fps content (which happens to be most movie content). Intel offers no support for 24Hz/24fps playback, AMD's implementation is a bit flaky, but NVIDIA's works flawlessly (at least with our test subjects). When connected to a display that supports a 24Hz input signal the option appears in the driver; just select it and you're good to go. The result is silky smooth playback of video content and it's nice.
Short of TrueHD/DTS-HD MA support, NVIDIA's GeForce 9300 is the perfect HTPC chipset. The NVIDIA control panel even offers more post processing customization options than both AMD and Intel, although we're thankful that NVIDIA disables all of the features by default. Honestly the only other complaint we have is that we need to have a monitor hooked up to the system to first get it installed in our home theater setup; once properly configured it worked flawlessly with our Integra DTC-9.8 pre-processor and JVC DLA-RS2 projector setup. There is still need for improvement on the software side to enable users to build a computer and simply plug it into a HT setup without a monitor and have it work.
Good job NVIDIA, here's your crown. (Care for a service plan with that?)
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yehuda - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Thanks Anand and Gary for all your work on this article. Do you know if the Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H board is coming out with the others?kevinkreiser - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Where's the discussion about hybrid-sli drivers/benchmarks? A follow-up article with the tests still in progress?This german review has hybrid-sli benchmarks but they omit a discussion about drivers or even how you set it up, they just show numbers.
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/mainbo...">http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hard...schnitt_...
kevinkreiser - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Wait my mistake, actually the german article mentions in the conclusion that they experienced bugginess with the hybrid-sli driver and sometimes games don't start or run really slow. Any comments from you guys at anandtech?Visual - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Does nVidia intend to have this GPU on an AMD chipset at all, or have they given up competing there?Can we expect this chipset to be used in Intel laptops (other than Apple), and will they still get the Centrino brand? If Intel insists on requiring their own chipsets for that brand, I'm afraid laptop manufacturers will not use it despite its obvious advantages.
Does something like hybrid-SLI work on this chipset, to get better performance from a 9400/9500/9600GT card?
From the Apple adverts it seems dynamic switching between the IGP and stand-alone GPU will be a reality in its laptops... is that the case also with the desktop version that you test today? I guess you'd have mentioned it if it were... Is it at least planned with future drivers or something?
R3MF - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
Good point about the Centrino brand, that may well make laptop manufacturers wary of this chipset, just because of the power of the Centrino brand.On the other hand, this may be a very good reason for nVidia to push the Via Nano netbook platform via big companies like HP which have a strong brand quality of their own.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
The Hybrid Power tech (switching between IGP and discrete GPU) should be available in this chipset; support for the feature still remains with the motherboard/notebook vendors, however. I'm still waiting for my first Windows notebook to feature hybrid power (which is also available with G45 chipsets... though why you'd want G45 over GF9300 is a tough question to answer; oh, right: Centrino 2!) You're right: Centrino as a brand is so powerful that NVIDIA can have the best solution in every way and still not see much uptake. We'll have to see how it goes....danielgr - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
It's funny... it seems that it's always the same, and Apple has to introduce something for people to get to know it...Sony has been selling "hybrid-power" laptops for about 2 years now... (here is an old laptop running Intel's 965GM chipset with NVIDIA 8400M graphics and "the magic switch"), together with LED displays, SSD drives...
Their current offer gets you Centrino2+DDR3, BD, Raid-SSD, HybridStuff with Nvidia 9300M GS on Intel's GM45, Wide Gammut LED display, and still weights around 1.5Kg with 7.5-11h of autonomy...
http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/Z1/feat1.html">http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/Z1/feat1.html
danielgr - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
Forgot the link to the "old_laptop":http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/SZ6/feat2.html">http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/SZ6/feat2.html
Gary Key - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
We will be updating the article shortly. It has been an all night meeting marathon with the motherboard suppliers and NVIDIA trying to get answers on the AHCI problems, memory performance, and other minor items we discovered. ASUS sent us a new BIOS that we will test in a couple of hours, the AHCI problems have diminished greatly after yet another clean install of Vista SP1 (still have some minor pauses during heavy drive load), and we feel safe enough in taking a detailed look at the motherboards in a couple of days.That said, NVIDIA surprised us with this chipset, probably the best one (all around) on the market for HTPC setups and casual gaming performance now. That is not to take anything away from the AMD platforms, personally I am running a 8750 and GF8200 hooked up to a new 52" LCD, if the price was right, the 9350e is a really sweet processor that will greatly lower power requirements on the AMD side, as we will see next week. Hopefully, AMD will respond with multi-channel LPCM output in their IG chipset. If that is not important, the 780g/790GX is great. ;)
Zstream - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
30% cpu utilization for a HTPC is good? Umm, I guess I come from a different perspective then.Quite a few HTPC's are for streaming, so with this chipset it is almost impossible to stream data while watching what you are streaming.
Did I misunderstand something here or what?