Born for HD: first review of G98-8400GS(D8M)

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the orange bar is default frequency.

The release of G98-8400GS means A LOT to NVIDIA. A low end card with full VC-1 and H.264 decode, it is powerful enough to fight with its rival HD2400Pro, and invading the HD playback market full of red cards.

From the HD test it is clear to see G98-8400GS have 100% VC-1 decode ability, DAMMIT can use this to attack NV no more.

The con is in the H.264 playback. but that’s not much. CPU usage higher than G86 about 6% while CPU is a Celeron 430.

Though HD 2400 Pro has a better performance in VC-1 and H.264 decoding, its VC-1 decoding ability can hardly use by other software like KMplayer and etc.( It’s heard that recently already got solution to fix this issue ). In this situation G98-8400GS can surely gain some of the HD playback market.

In other ways, NV has weakened G98-8400GS’ 3D performance by throwing over 8SP, make G98-8400GS can not compare to G86-8400GS.It is clear what NV thinking is: if you wanna play game and watch HD video using by hardware decoding? Buy a 8800GT instead.

full review at Expreview.com