VIA's Dual Core Nano & VN1000 Chipset Previewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 15, 2010 12:26 PM ESTFinal Words
It's not hard to beat Atom. The chip was originally designed to be used in MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) and aimed at smartphones, but found extra work in netbooks and nettops. Intel has also been very conservative with Atom's roadmap. The chip is still on 45nm while Intel is a little over a year away from beginning its move to 22nm. Atom's architecture also remains in-order, while ARM, AMD and VIA are all presenting if not shipping out-of-order alternatives aimed at similar PC markets.
The dual-core Nano platform offers better graphics performance and better CPU performance than Atom. The Chrome 520 IGP, at times, can even give Intel's HD Graphics a run for the money. The two unknowns are power consumption and price. The former will change as VIA transitions to 40nm, while I couldn't get an answer out of VIA on the latter. Current Nano motherboards retail for around $120, but that's for the single core offering. At 40nm VIA should be able to offer two Nano cores for the same price. If you can buy a DC Nano board with BGA chip for around $120, it'll be a steal compared to Atom and more powerful platforms.
The biggest competitor for Nano may not end up being Intel after all. AMD's Bobcat is due to ship to OEMs before the end of the year, and before the end of the week we'll have our full performance preview of it.
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East17 - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
AMD delivered and even exceeded their promises with Zacate. It's a very good solution that mops the floor with Atom and sometimes, especially when IGP is involved, mops the floor even with Core i3 that is a CPU much more expensive with an expensive platform. What's amazing is that Zacate's best competitor is not Intel Atom but VIA's Nano & VN1000 chipset. Congratulations to both AMD and VIA. I think they should really take over the "power efficient market" and just banish INTEL with its expensive, low quality and low performance part.chukked - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
can anyone please tell me why can not nvidia take over via and make their own x86 cpu? as via has right to make x86 cpu.UrQuan3 - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
I want to thank Anand for testing video playback on the platform. It's entirely too often that only encoding is tested. If I have a htpc, playback is all I really care about. If Via gets that working, I'll be buying one. If not (like the last 4 Via chipsets) it's a no go. In my experience, the Nano can only handle 720p playback in software.General.TerroR! - Saturday, November 20, 2010 - link
Things would have a bit more interesting, if there was an inclusion of the similarly clocked Atom D525 @ 1.8 GHz, in all the tests.