The core logic features of the GeForce 9400/9300 chipset are impressive and encompass pretty anything a modern Core 2-based chipset is required to have.  The memory controller (probably one of the last chipset-based memory controllers to be built) can support either DDR2-800 or DDR3-1333 memory configurations though all of our sample motherboards chose DDR2 for cost considerations. 

Processor support includes all the current dual-core and quad-core CPUs that use the 1333 MHz or slower front-side bus - 1600 MHz FSB is just not going anywhere and NVIDIA won't be losing any business by not supporting it.  The chipset does have 20 full lanes of PCI Express 2.0 support and will likely be divided up between a single x16 PCIe 2.0 connection and a either a single x4 or a couple x2 connections for expansion purposes.  Up to 5 legacy PCI slots are supported as well.

Connectivity on the chipset is superb as well: 6 SATA 3.0 Gb/s channels, 12 USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet and HD Azalia audio support. 

Where the chipset gets even more exciting is when we look at the integrated graphics core included on the die. 

The entire GeForce 9400/9300 die

The graphics architecture on the chip has 16 shader processors (not an astounding amount when you compare it to the 240 SPs that the GTX 280 sports) that culminate in 54 GigaFLOPS of processor power for an IGP.  The GeForce 9400 chipset and 9300 chipset differ only in the performance of their integrated graphics clock speeds: the 9400 runs at 580 MHz core and 1400 MHz shader clocks while the 9300 runs at 450 MHz core and 1200 MHz shader clocks.  Other features remain the same between the two models including support for dual-link DVI resolutions of 2560x1600,  PureVideo HD, 7.1 channel LPCM audio, NVIDIA PhysX and Hybrid SLI.  Display connectivity is also robust with support for VGA, DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort - you can power any TWO of these at any one time from the chipset including one analog (VGA) and one digital or two digital outputs. 

I do have some beef with the claim that the chipset supports 2560x1600 resolutions with dual-link DVI output - while that may be the case none of the three motherboards I tested for this article implemented it and instead ran single-link resolutions only up to 1920x1200.  Chances are that is going to be good enough for most users but I find it hard to believe the cost for including the additional hardware (whatever it is) to move to dual-link capability is very high. 

The PureVideo HD technology is what allows the GeForce 9400/9300 chipset to offload the CPU for decoding H.264 content including Blu-ray movies. 

Of course VC-1 and MPEG-2 decode acceleration is still supported but those aren't nearly as strenuous as high bit-rate H.264 content. 

Hybrid SLI is a good feature on paper as it allows you to team up your integrated graphics core with a discrete GPU for increased gaming performance.  The problem lies in the fact that the only discrete cards supported are the GeForce 8400 GS and the 8500 GT - not exactly the most common and relevant cards for today's market.

And, lest I forgot and someone at NVIDIA chastises me for it, I can't NOT mention that the new GeForce 9400/9300 chipsets support other key NVIDIA features like PhysX technology and CUDA.  While PhysX technology is interesting to discuss, CUDA is really the technology that could make a difference for your computing needs in the future.  In recent weeks NVIDIA has been showing off a partnership with Adobe that accelerates software like Photoshop, Premiere and more and even though CUDA isn't explicitly used, the GPGPU idea is the same.  Even Apple and their support for OpenCL coming in the new Snow Leopard software next year will be putting GPU-centric computing into an important light.

Now, let's take a look at the actual retail motherboards we received for this product and how they compare to each other and to the feature lists above.