Zotac and EVGA Release Geforce 9300 Motherboards

Zotac and Evga have released new nForce 730i motherboards featuring Nvidia Geforce 9300 integrated graphics.

The new motherboards by Zotac and Evga are among the first to use the newly announced nForce 730i chipset. Both motherboards support Intel socket LGA775 based processors with FSB speeds up to 1333 MHz. They also feature integrated Nvidia Geforce 9300 graphics, which are faster than current Intel integrated graphics solutions, but not fast enough for serious gaming. Further information regarding Nvidia’s new Geforce 9300 platform can be found in a recent Tom’s Hardware article.

The new GF9300-A-E (aka, the Zotac Geforce 9300) motherboard by Zotac uses a microATX form factor with one PCI-E x16 slot, one PCI-E 1x slot and two PCI slots. There are four DDR2 sockets available, with support for up to 16 GB of DDR2 800 MHz RAM. There are also six SATA ports available with RAID support, along with a single PATA connector that can support two devices.

On the back panel there are four USB ports, a PS/2 mouse port, a PS/2 keyboard port, audio ports, a RJ45 port, a DVI port, a VGA port and a HDMI port. From the product photos, it would seem as if the motherboard uses a fan to cool the chipset. According to Zotac, there is also an onboard diagnostic display that provides diagnostic information for advanced users.

The new 113-YW-E115-TR (aka, the Evga 730i) motherboard by Evga uses an ATX form factor with one PCI-E x16 slot, two PCI-E x1 slots and three PCI slots. There are four DDR2 sockets available, with support for up to 8 GB of DDR2 800 MHz memory. There are also eight SATA ports available with RAID support, a floppy connector and a single PATA connector.

On the back panel there are four USB ports, audio ports, a PS/2 mouse port, a PS/2 keyboard port, a RJ45 port, a DVI-D port, a VGA port and a HDMI port. From the product photos, it would appear that the motherboard has no fan present. The new Evga motherboard has a MSRP of $129.99.