Hardware Zotac GeForce 9300 (MCP7a) Motherboard

You are correct in that the tech report says the 8200/8300 has 16 shaders in their 8300 review but in their 9300 review they appear to have changed their minds to 8 shaders. This sort of inconsistency drives me mad!

This is an interesting theory and you may well be right. This chipset has been launched in such a way that many things may not be simple or as they appear to be. At the end of the day a products capabilities at launch should be accurately reflected on all promotional and informational material provided by the manufacturer. For example if the 9300 does not support IDE in any way then it shouldn't have it listed as a feature on the web page I linked to.

You're quite right, on reflection it's not quite the same situation. Coincidently now that I think about it, when intel dropped support for IDE didn't they still have to leave something in the south bridge for auxiliary IDE chips to "hook" into? Perhaps that's why the web page states support for one IDE channel. Support being used in that oh so annoying sense like with early gpus having "support" for HDCP!

Why AMD would go backwards was much discussed by myself & others in your 780G review with no conclusive outcome. I doubt I'd purchase a 690G now anyway so I guess the debate is pretty academic so I think we'll just leave it.

I realise that lower resolutions tend to be more cpu bound but I wouldn't have thought that would be the case with a "weak" gpu. Even at low resolutions I would have expected the gpu in this case to be the bottleneck. If you're right in that the 8300 & 9300 both have 16 shaders (most of the evidence is leaning that way) then you must be right and so what I would have expected above is clearly wrong. As for the direct access to main memory I asked a question that was discussed on the latest tech report podcast where Scott mentioned that this may not be such a big issue for gaming due to bandwidth being far more important than latency for gaming.

To be honest I think my initial question on your comments in this regard in the article was just me being nit picky with the way you worded it so I think I'll just forget about it. I can't even remember what my initial gripe was about anyway.

The datasheet here states that the G45 supports DVI-HDMI-DisplayPort "Natively" and has "Integrated" HDCP keys. It has 2 digital "ports" each of which can be configured to either DVI, HDMI or Displayport. Both ports also support HDCP but not at the same time. They support resolutions up to 2560x1600@60Hz. If I've read the datasheet correctly then the G45's display output capabilities are pretty darn good!

On further reading this is definitely not the cause. The cause as explained here appears to be that:

ArcSoft and Corel have since updated their software and now have HDCP repeater support for the G45 but AFAIK PowerDVD hasn't yet been updated

The cpu usage numbers in this review are definitely not right and now I know why. I've read the better part of ten reviews on the G45 and noticed that all the ones which didn't appear to have HA working were using intel motherboards. Turns out that you need to change the PAVP setting in the BIOS to Lite as stated here

 

That's because NV went around telling everyone the 8200/8300 had only 8

Cheers!

 

That would make sense chronologically if they had said 8 in the 8300 review and 16 in the 9300 review but they did it the other way around which doesn't make sense to me. If Nvidia were telling people it was 8 when the 8300 first came out then I would expect it to have been 8 in the earlier review and 16 in the latter once they had had time to figure out that Nvidia had some incompetent people giving out false information.


Any comments on what I found in the G45 datasheet as regards display output capabilities? It seems pretty clear to me that the G45 is now like competing chipsets in that it has native support for digital outputs so I would be interested to know why you feel the G45 still operates similar to previous intel IGPs in so far as requiring 3rd party chips to enable digital outputs?

 

No they said 16 earlier and 8 later for 8x00, even though GPU-Z reads the 8x00 as 16 all the time.

I haven't even read the G45 stuff tbh, brain is elsewhere and I'll forget it by the time I actually test G45 properly.

Why I feel that way: because I was told by several TWese mobo manuf. that it does and because it has two digital chips by the HDMI and DVI outputs (although I haven't cross-matched these online yet).

 

Wow! In that case I give up as none of the sequence of events makes much sense. I don't envy your job of trying to get accurate and timely information from these people! Perhaps a column on the subject might be an idea (prob don't wanna p*** them off so I understand if you decline )?

I'm not sure how what you've just said and what's in the datasheet can be reconciled but I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it. I guess we'll continue the discussion when you publish your G45 review (give you a break till then ).

I don't know if you've been reading the IGP chronicles series over at anandtech but they highlight a VERY important issue with Cool 'n' quiet causing dropped frames when playing hd video and I wander whether this is something you plan to address in your G45 review given that it could be a deal breaker for those deciding between an intel and amd platform for a HTPC?

 

Any idea where one could buy this board from? I'm not having much luck with google.....

 

You can get the mini itx version... check the thread in the Hardware section

Can't help with this particular board I'm afraid