Apple is going to use NVidia's 9400m GPU in their MacBooks. I am going to setup a new system for HTPC use and the 9400 chipsets get very good reviews for HD playback so this would probably the basis for my new HTPC.

Gigabyte comes next week with a new board (GA-E7AUM-DS2H) based on the 9400 and has also firewire on board. Firewire is important for me because I use a FireDTV dvb-S2 card. The FireDTV is supported by EyeTV !

The new system I am setting up I want to play around with Leopard, although if it won't work I'll continue on Vista. So a few questions:

- by choosing for the 9400 chipset, although not yet on the hardware compatable list, seems a clever choice because Apple is going to use it themselves ?
- Because Apple uses themselves these chipsets it will be possible to get a near vanilla install with good support for audio, networking, display?
- What CPU to get (good HD playback, low on energy)
- Will SSD's be supported ? Or go for a regular hdd ?