MCP7A's multimedia magic
The multimedia manaThe DX10-class graphics, whilst looking good on a specification sheet, aren't potent enough to run fast-paced games at, say, 1,280x1,024 with decent image-quality - the grafted-on GeForce 8400 GS discrete card isn't the fastest ever made. NVIDIA knows this and once you cut through the PR bumf that espouses class-leading IGP performance. MCP7A's real asset is the multimedia goodness that it ships with.
The graphics core carries NVIDIA's VP3 video-processing engine that's yet to be introduced on the majority of discrete cards. It can offload the decoding of H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2 content from the host CPU's shoulders, just like AMD's Avivo 2. Previous generations of the VP engine have failed to provide full support for VC-1 decoding. Additionally, the GPU is able to handle dynamic colour contrast and Blu-ray Profile 1.1 (picture-in-picture), too.
Integrated outputs are also good, comprising of a choice between DisplayPort, HDMI (v1.3a), dual-link DVI, or VGA. Audio can be transferred over HDMI with 8-channel LPCM sound (192kHz, 24-bit), making MCP7A a good fit for users looking for an HTPC mainboard.
The other bits
An extra four PCIe Gen2 lanes will be used by most partners to hang discrete ASICs (GigE, for example) or to add a PCIe x1 expansion slot on to the mainboard itself.
Storage is taken care of NVIDIA MediaShield that supports up to six drives and RAID0/1/0+1, and 5 formats. A GigE controller is integrated into the chipset with the board partner providing the physical layer (PHY).
Other bits are standard fare, including 12 USB2.0 ports and a further five PCIc slots, but we expect most motherboards to ship with a mATX form-factor.
CUDA - finally beginning to tell?
NVIDIA's promising the best-in-class IGP rendering with MCP7A. Basic calculations tell us that some 67GFLOPs of compute performance is available for the GeForce 9400 variant and that brings processing non-graphics tasks such as video transcoding, accessed via programs written in NVIDIA's CUDA language, into play - using an IGP for more than just strict multimedia or gaming, basically.
What's missing?
From what we can discern, the first iteration of boards will lack NVIDIA's Hybrid Power support, which cuts power to a discrete card and routes it to the IGP, to save energy. It would make perfect sense with this kind of chipset so we're left wondering why it's been cast aside for now.
Pre-benchmark summary
NVIDIA's MCP7A - GeForce 9300 and GeForce 9400 - provides an up-to-date chipset for Intel processors that has most bases covered. mATX-sized GeForce 9300 boards will start at around £65 whilst faster-clocked GeForce 9400s will arrive with a street price of around £75. Let's take a look at a retail GeForce 9300 example from MSI.
