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MSI P7NGM Digital Review
[Abstract]
NVIDIA's Big mGPU Push NVIDIA has been whipping up a storm on the integrated GPU front recently. Last year saw the debut of its GeForce 9300/9400 mGPU chipsets, which tethered the GPU prowess o...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
Conclusion
NVIDIA's motherboard chipsets have fallen far from its peak popularity in the past. AMD's recent chipsets have proven to be quite tough competitors, especially with the new 790GX and the 780G while Intel's own chipsets have been quite solid for the past few generations. With the new X58 chipset for the Core i7, there isn't a need anymore to go NVIDIA to get SLI support.
So the integrated GPU chipset segment looks like a very important one for NVIDIA. Here, its GeForce 9300/9400 mGPU has a distinct performance advantage over Intel's current G45 chipset. AMD's 780G also puts up a tougher fight on the AMD platform but from the developments so far like NVIDIA's Ion, the Intel Atom platform is the NVIDIA's next target.
Besides having all the features and performance one expects of NVIDIA's GeForce 9300 mGPU chipset, the MSI P7NGM-Digital also happens to have one of the lowest prices that we could find for a mATX board based on the GeForce 9300. |
Such a move is not surprising, for the integrated GPU brings a lot to the table. As we have seen with our first GeForce 9300 mGPU board from ASUS and subsequently, the MSI P7NGM-Digital, modern 3D games can be played at modest settings with these integrated GPUs. More importantly, it's the HD playback hardware acceleration that makes it a natural fit for mATX desktop boards wanted by media center enthusiasts and also for multimedia entertainment notebooks.
Looking at this MSI version, it's very much a standard implementation of the GeForce 9300. Performance too followed the book, with this board showing negligible differences with the ASUS. The only difference came when we measured the temperature of the heatsink that's cooling the chipset. The MSI P7NGM-Digital had a much cooler heatsink compared to the ASUS. Besides that, there were some minor differences, with the MSI having a decent board layout though it could have been better.
When it came to pricing however, the MSI too had a slight advantage, as it goes for US$109, US$10 less than the ASUS. One will do fine with either choice, so besides the razor-thin price difference, it boils down to the specifics, like the ASUS having rear S/PDIF outputs which the MSI lacked while the MSI came with FireWire, something that the ASUS did not include. The real winner here is the consumer, with the number of motherboard vendors offering GeForce 9300/9400 boards increased from the last time we reviewed them (when there was just the ASUS).
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