nForce 730i motherboard by XFX

XFX has introduced a new motherboard based on nVidia's 730i chipset. The chipset is designed for Intel's S775 processors and features an integrated GeForce 9300 graphics chip. The board has a Micro-ATX form factor and plenty of expandability. There are four DDR2-800 memory slots with room for up to 8 GB of RAM. A PCI-Express 16x 2.0 slot is also present to add a seperate graphics card.  

The board has a typical XFX color setting, combining a green graphics card slot with a black PCB. The GeForce 9300, as the board will be called, has a small heatsink on the nForce 730i chipset. A heatpipe connects it with another small heatsink on the CPU power mosfets. Thanks to the modern chipset, the board is compatible with all Intel socket 775 processors with an FSB of up to 1333 MHz. The onboard GeForce 9300 IGP features 16 shader units and supports DX10.0, CUDA and nVidia PhysX. 

 

XFX's new motherboard has six SATA II connectors, two PCI and a PCI-E 1x slot. The company has also placed a display on the board to show possible error codes. The I/O panel of the XFX GeForce 9300 has plenty of connectivity with 6x USB, an eSATA port, 7.1 audio (analog and optical) and a Gigabit LAN connector. The onboard graphics chip has a VGA, DVI and HDMI port, HDCP is supported on the latter two output signals.  

  
                                                     I/O panel with HDMI and eSATA 

 Author: Marc Mouthaan