# 9300M GS shaders



## Edddy (Jan 4, 2009)

I'm a bit confused about something...

I'm thinking about getting a Sony VAIO Z11WN laptop to replace my SZ61WN in which the graphics card appears to have melted... but I'm a bit worried that the new Z series may actually be slower, as it has a 9300M GS GPU rather than the 8400M GS that the SZ6 had, and apparently the 9300M GS only has half the number of unified shaders (8 rather than 16), at least according to most sources...

However, Wikipedia and the GPU-Z statistics page say that the 9300M GS actually has 16 unified shaders, and in fact, according to the GPU-Z search page there are no NVIDIA GPUs with 8 unified shaders.

Is it possible that GPU-Z is reporting the number of shaders incorrectly... i.e. does it literally count the number of unified shaders on the card, or does it just look up the number of shaders that it should have based on some other details of the chip?

Or did NVIDIA just change their minds about the number of shaders to use at the last minute? (although I still can't find any other sources mentioning the higher number of shaders)


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## ktr (Jan 4, 2009)

Nvidia reveresed the naming for the 9m series. The 9300m G has 16sp, while the 9300m GS has 8sp. So the current equivalent of the 8400m GS is the 9300m G. But according to www.notebookcheck.net (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html), the 9300m GS is still faster than the 8400m GS, mostly due to its higher clock speeds, and it will yield better results in HD video decoding for it has an updated video processor.


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## Edddy (Jan 5, 2009)

Thanks  that's what I thought from what I've read everywhere else. So in that case GPU-Z is reporting it incorrectly then?

If it has got only 8 shaders, I still don't quite see how the extra clock speed can make up for that, as it's nowhere near double (550MHz instead of 400MHz right?)

Would it depend on how a particular game utilises the shaders (i.e. how many it can actually make use of at once), or on other settings like resolution, and it's just faster than the 8400M GS on average (and perhaps slower in some cases)? Or should the performance really be the same or better in all cases?


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