Select your weapon carefully...
Apart from resembling some crazy Klingon bladed weapon, this card has quite a few quirkish features that you won't see elsewhere. But before we delve into the oddities and eccentricies of this card, let's have a look at what give this card the get up and go, to up get and went (or something).
Using a very cut down version of the g96 core on a 55nm fab, with only 16 stream processors, using DDR2 on a 128-bit bus, these specs don't scream performance any more than you'd scream at the sight of a fluffy-wuffy kitten. Being made with such a small process is rather handy though - this card can be effectively cooled via the passive heatsink that we've lovingly dubbed "Taj". Sure, we've sunk to a new level of nerddom here, but this also means that it makes absolutely no extra noise - something very handy for those media buffs out there. Temps hit 65 while idling, and just over 70 when loaded, but with any kind of airflow over the card this will drop down to the forties. Just don't expect to be overclocking this one without airflow - heat it no likey.
Another strange quirk about this card is the presence of a SLI tab connector that is covered with a piece of tape that says "SLI Not Support". The circuit traces are even hooked up, and the 9400GT definitely supports SLI, so this is a very odd design choice.
Performance was understandably low, but HD video playback and older games will be fine. Vantage had a problem running, an issue with PhysX not playing nicely with the card, but you're not really going to be benching with this one so it's rather immaterial.
This card is a decent choice, but we'd look towards the other Zotac card for aural bliss.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012