News VIA announces new Nano chip

VIA has announced a new Nano range - the Nano 3000 series - which it hopes will challenge Intel's dominance of the netbook market, offering improved performance over the Atom.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/11/04/via-announces-new-nano-chip/1

 

I would really like to see the maximum power draw figures - though that a pretty impressive figure for an idle power draw.

Forget about netbooks, if this lives up to it's promises it'll be ideal for HTPC builds.

 

If it decodes 1080p fine then yes it's a really awesome HTPC deal.

 

Problem is, I don't think the Atom N270 Intel chipset is the combo to beat for an HTPC - the real target here would be the N330/Ion combo from nVidia. With power consumption way below Intel's chipset and the ability to decode 1080p using CUDA, it's a much better HTPC offering than Intel's Atom offerings.

 

In all fairness, these benchmarks were designed to highlight the CPU vs. CPU performance. What it highlights is that potentially these new Via chips will be an even better companion for Ion than the Atom line.

<unsure> Nvidia themselves have said Ion 2 won't be an Intel solution, haven't they? </unsure>

 

I'm always amazed how few Nano powered netbooks there are in the shops. If I was going to buy a netbook, I'd make sure I bought a Nano.

 

Now here's a question: Which is more powerful, a mobile Athlon 64 3200+ (clawhammer 2.0ghz with 1mb L2 cache) or the new 2.0 ghz Nano?
I find my Athlon laptop powerful enough for my needs, but power efficiency isn't one of its strong points. Rather than just netbooks, would these new Nano's be good enough for full size budget laptops? And when can we expect dual core Nano's?

 

Not unless Microsoft release a ARM version of Windows 7 Starter edition.

 

I think that a mobile Althon 64 will probably perform slightly faster, but depending on what you want to use your budget laptop for Ithink both would perform equally and it'd be hard to tell the difference under everyday use.

I use my netbook (atom based) for internet, films, office (word, excel, outlook mainly) and poker and it is more than capable. The other half runs a celeron based laptop and I would use the atom in preference. Assuming your usage isn't much more intensive, the new nano would be even better.

 

Isn't the ION2 planned for this chip?

 

Are these things still built on 65nm or are we getting a die shrink?

 

I sure hope so... ION+Nano would be my next netbook.

 

maybe this is the CPU that will be used with the whole ION2 that nVidia was talking about???

 

At last, 1080p. All I want now is for whatever device uses the chip to be HDMI out and that's my movie collection sorted for hotel visits.

 

N330-based ION board already handle 1080p fine, and have HDMI ports too.

 

Flibblebot, do you know if the board is used in a netbook already?

 

I think several laptop brands have announced ION netbooks, including Samsung & Lenovo. Asus are also bringing out an N330/ION Eee PC (model 1201N)

They're all on the horizon, due to land within the next couple of months, according to rumours.

 

Ah I thought you were hinting a product was available to go now. I got a spam mail from Creative the other day on that Zii product they are pushing, apparently 1080p and HDMI out and the size of an iPhone or thereabouts ... must read it when I find the time!

 

Any word on if they're going to do mini-ITX boards on this? I just ordered a Via PC 3500 board for my (nearly) silent fileserver project, but I'm already looking at an upgrade path.