VIA have announced the S3 Graphics Chrome 540 GTX, which they’re calling the world’s most-connected high-definition video card. The card has HDMI, DisplayPort and Dual-Link DVI connections, together with an integrated Dolby 7.1 digital surround sound processor and 256MB of GDDR3 memory.
We’ve already heard enough about the Samsung NC20 to perk our interest – HD support and 6hrs runtime out of the box will do that – but it’s taken until now to see the 12.1-inch budget ultraportable appear on video. NetbookNews have an impromptu unboxing and some early first impressions of the NC20; benchmarks will follow, but for now Sascha tells us that “the Intel Atom got a real competitor.”
Check out the NC20 unboxing video after the cut
After playing with VIA’s ARTiGO A2000 barebones NAS earlier in the month, and coming away impressed with the file-sharing and backup performance of its 1.5GHz C7 processor, we’re interested to see VIA drop the same CPU into their altogether more serious 8-bay rack server. The VIA NSR7800 is a 2U rack server with eight 3.5-inch SATA-II drive bays and dual gigabit LAN, which apparently consumes at least 50-percent less power than rival products.
Dell has suspended shipments of the Inspiron Mini 12 netbook, at least that’s the latest rumor from DigiTimes. According to their sources, the 12.1-inch budget ultraportable – which uses Intel’s Atom Z530 processor – could be discontinued, leaving Samsung the only vendor with a 12-inch netbook.
Intel Atom, NVIDIA Ion, AMD Neo and VIA Nano – do you buy a new netbook today, or is there something much better waiting just around the corner? In a way, the netbook market today is a microcosm of the full-size laptop market as it was five years ago: there’s the potential for significant leaps in capability, as manufacturers and chipset OEMS find their feet in the budget ultraportable niche. Nobody wants to waste their money, but most of us would also like a new toy sooner rather than later. SlashGear picks out the next big thing in netbooks, and helps answer the eternal computing question: buy now or wait?
Netbooks using NVIDIA’s Ion platform – that couples an Intel Atom CPU with a NVIDIA GPU – have a target price of just $399, and will give customers the “full PC experience” rather than the “inferior” performance of current devices. That’s the opinion of NVIDIA’s plain-talking cofounder, president, and CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, who has been talking with LaptopMag about the proliferation of mobile devices and ultra-low voltage chipsets. According to Huang, today’s netbook is “a low-cost PC that doesn’t work that well” and that is in fact hurting the PC software industry due to its poor support for common applications.
After the cut, Huang on Ion, AMD, MIDs and more
Samsung made a great first-impression with its debut to the netbook sector: the NC10 won praise both for its excellent keyboard and lengthy battery life. So there’s plenty for its sequel, the Samsung NC20, to live up to. Ukrainian site gagadget have managed to acquire an NC20 of their own, and have been testing out how the switch to VIA’s Nano U225 processor and Chrome9 HC3 integrated graphics impact on performance.
VIA are planning single- and dual-core Nano 3000 processors each with very low power requirements, expected to begin to hit the market from late 2009. The single-core Nano 3000 CPUs will be made using 65nm processes, and offer integer and floating-point enhancement over the existing Nano 1000/2000 series chips; meanwhile the dual-core Nano 3000 will have a native dual-core design, be built using 45nm or 40nm processes and offer twice the performance.
Samsung are preparing to launch their latest netbook, the NC20, which will arrive in February 2009 to replace the existing NC10. Unlike its predecessor, however, which used an Intel Atom CPU, the NC20 has defected to VIA’s 1.3MHz Nano U225 processor, which it pairs with a 12.1-inch display and 1GB of RAM.
VIA Technologies today announced the Via ARTiGo A2000 barebone storage mini-server. The ARTiGo A2000 boast large storage space in a very stylish, compact, low power and low noise system. With all the media we download to our PCs these days, it is nice to have somewhere to store all of it so that the primary memory is not all taken up.
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