Details of VIA’s upcoming mobile processor lineup have emerged, courtesy of a leaked roadmap slide. The document details not only the 65nm VIA Nano-E, which will begin mass production in June 2009, but a dual-core Nano built with a new (i.e. smaller) process technology and set to reach the market from around June 2010.
S3, the graphics label for VIA, announced their Chrome 500 series graphics chips yesterday, offering up a competitor to the Radeon HD 4350 line as well as other budget cards that provide features at a much lower price.
VIA have announced the VIPRO VP7710, a fanless touchscreen panel PC intended for industrial and commercial applications but likely to prompt at least a little interest from domestic custom installers. Based on either a 1.6GHz VIA Eden or 1.0GHz C7 processor with up to 1GB of DDR2 RAM, the primary means of input is using the 10.4-inch water and dust resistant touch panel.
Intel’s Atom 330 is most definitely intended for the nettop, not the netbook, market, we’re told, and so hopes were high that the latest super-efficient chip would offer a pleasing boost of dual-core performance what with battery concerns no longer an issue. PC Pro brought a Shuttle barebones – I’m guessing the X27D – based on the Atom 330 in from the cold and proceeded to benchmark it against not only the single-core Atom N270 but a 2GHz VIA C7-D system too. The results were, to be blunt, mildly disappointing.
Recognizing just how hot the netbook market is right now, both AMD and VIA seem to be all set to launch processors directly targeted at that segment of the market sometime this week. Their goal seems to be maintaining the low price tag and small build netbooks are known for.
It seems like earlier plans for NVIDIA and VIA to team up on a netbook project have since fallen by the wayside, though the two companies will continue to work on desktop technologies.
NVIDIA and VIA signed a deal in April, that tied the two corporations to developing a netbook platform that would combine NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chipsets with the VIA C7 and Nano CPUs. This would have made for a very speedy netbook and even mobile Internet devices.
VIA have taken the wraps off of their first Mini-ITX board to use the company’s Nano processor, the replacement to the low-power C7-M. The VIA VB8001 board features the 1.6GHz processor itself, support for up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, gigabit ethernet and two SATA ports. There’s also a mini-PC slot for adding wireless broadband cards.
The Apricot Picobook Pro – one of the few netbooks to use VIA’s 1.2GHz C7-M processor – has been put through its paces by the Register Hardware team, and while this isn’t the killer budget ultraportable the company might have hoped it was, it has its fair share of notable features. Aside from the CPU, the Picobook Pro also stands out from the netbook crowd by having WiFi ‘a’ support, as well as an ExpressCard slot.
The sequel to HP’s Mini-Note 2133 netbook has shown up on the company’s online store. Called the HP Mini 1000, the netbook measures less than 1-inch thick and weighs from 2.25lbs; it also has a new, black casing and appears to be intended as a more entry-level machine than the 2133. The new price certainly bears that out: the HP Mini 1000 netbook costs from just $399.
While it may not have anything to do with the Commodore brand from back in the day, this Commodore Netbook is sure to catch attention based on its name alone. Jumping into the netbook market, the Commodore UMMD 8010/F made its debut at IFA 2008 and mostly skimmed under the radar.
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