[Review] Zotac GeForce 8400GS 256MB aka. G98

In Dec 2007, NVIDIA quietly unveils GeForce 8400GS with a new core: G98. But this time NVIDIA keeps low, did not make any announcement. Even their official site did not have any information about it. What’s more, in the market we can hardly find a G98-8400GS.

The new GeForce 8400GS(D8M)
As a new core in the market, G98 is for high definition segment. The biggest point of this new core is PureVideo HD gen 3, Supports VC-1 video 100% hardware decode. With 100% VC-1 and H.264 decoding, pureVideo HD gen 3 can finally fight against UVD.

G98 acn support totally 4 steps of the hardware decode.
Besides PureVideo HD, G98 continue on GeForce 8800GT(D8P)’s process technology, more advance than the older generation 80nm. The new 65nm process lower the production cost and also the power consumption.
The G98-8400GS supports HDMI and Dual Link HDCP video output. With this I/O selections the card can be a decent selection for HTPC.
But besides that NVIDIA chops off G98’s game performance. The same with G86, G98 is also 64 bit memory interface. But G98 only have half of G86’s architecture. The new core only have 8 Stream Processors,4 Texture Filtering Units, 4 Texture Addressing Units and 4 ROPs. The core runs at 567MHz,higher than G86-8400GS.
So it is quite clear, NVIDIA want the card to be a HTPC only product.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: A closer look
Page 3: Test bed
Page 4: VC-1 1080P: King Kong
Page 5: VC-1 1080P: De Javu
Page 6: H.264 1080P: X-MAN3
Page 7: H.264 1080P: The Prestige
Page 8: MPEG-2 1080P: Pioneer DEMO2006
Page 9: 3DMark06
Page 10: Game benches
Page 11: Overclock test
Page 12: Final thought

February 14th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
When / where can I purchase one of these – ideally with passive cooling?