VIA's Dual Core Nano & VN1000 Chipset Previewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 15, 2010 12:26 PM ESTCPU Performance
Overall CPU performance is typically leaps and bounds better than Intel’s dual-core Atom D510. However that’s an easy target to beat. If we look at an identically (or even lower) clocked Pentium or Celeron dual-core processor, VIA loses.
Photoshop performance is actually pretty impressive for the platform we're looking at. You get performance that's in the range of low end Pentium Dual-Core processors.
Even video encoding impresses as the DC Nano platform is faster than AMD's dual-core 1.5GHz Athlon X2. Intel has the performance-per-clock advantage with the Pentium dual-core but Atom is nowhere near it.
Nano's single threaded performance is really where it shines vs. Atom. You get roughly double the performance, which is quite visible in normal OS interaction or light apps like web browsing. Everything just pops up a lot quicker.
With a second core at its disposal the new Nano does very well in multithreaded environments as well. Again we have it besting the Athlon X2 3250e.
I ran our Par2 test here because it is highly optimized for Intel architectures. It is a real world test however and it shows you that despite VIA's architectural advantages, there will be situations where even an Atom may be faster.
In most cases however, the DC Nano will be noticeably faster than a Pineview Atom and within striking distance of an Athlon X2.
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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.