VIA intros Nano 3000 Series processors

[Kibaruk]

In my experience with the atom series, I'd describe them as anaemic at best. I'm really looking forward to these offerings from VIA and the CortexA9 from ARM.

Can run Win 7, explore, msn, watch divx or even h264 without flickering, use programming tools such as netbeans, and so on. So I would like to know what anaemic at best means for you, maybe gaming? or video editing? NETbook, the name says it all why can't people understand it.

 

[SinOfDeath]

So hold on, im confused whats better, more GHz or less?

 

[zaidpirwani]

I just wonder if it is anything like Atom, as atom was a complete waste of my money....

 

[freedomthinker]

This seems like an excellent replacement to the Atom chips , they are getting annoying actually ;/ . But these chips seem to have plenty of power Look forward for updated and reviews !

 

[freedomthinker]

This seems like an excellent replacement to the Atom chips , they are getting annoying actually ;/ . But these chips seem to have plenty of power Look forward for updated and reviews !

 

[Puiu]

i really wonder if it's really able to play 1080p. 720 maybe but 1080p is a bit too much for an netbook.

 

[slh28]

More competition is always good, it means cheaper prices for us consumers. I think VIA should spend some more on marketing though, I doubt most people will know that there are other CPUs besides Intel and AMD.

 

[ET3D]

"I'm really looking forward to these offerings from VIA and the CortexA9 from ARM."

Why bundle ARM here? I'm quite sure ARM will be "anemic", as well as not compatible with Windows or its software, which will make these "smartbooks" quite limited. Given a very low price they might find a place in the market, but I can't say I'm really excited about them.

@Kibaruk "NETbook, the name says it all why can't people understand it."

What exactly does that mean. Does watching movies and using Netbeans somehow falls under "net" while gaming and video editing doesn't? Who defines this then?

 

[ET3D]

Sorry, that was a bit snarky (and I have no way to edit that).

The point is that "netbook" is a press coined term for a certain class of notebooks. People always try to put things into neat compartments, and it doesn't always work well. That's why you get lots of people saying that netbooks will die. Sure, if you define a netbook as having very specific hardware, then they're right. The PC market is always moving forward and in a couple of years a low cost, small notebooks will likely have dual core CPU's, DX10 or better graphics and 4GB or more of RAM. And then people who care about semantics will fight over whether they are netbooks, and whether netbooks exist any more, but they'll still occupy the same market position.

So if anyone can help bring "netbooks" which can do more things thanks to a faster CPU, or better graphics, or whatever, and keep the low price and light weight, then I'm all for it, and I don't much care if some people will think they're not "netbooks" any longer.

 

[ET3D]

Puiu said:
i really wonder if it's really able to play 1080p. 720 maybe but 1080p is a bit too much for an netbook.

First of all, that's something I always wondered: does anyone really use 1080p on a netbook? I can understand a nettop that's hooked to a TV, and whose primary use is video, but a netbook? At the high end they have a 720p resolution, but at the low end not even that, and I find it harder to imagine them being hooked to a TV.

As for the Nano playing 1080p, from what I understand (from reading other sites), that's part of the functionality of the chipset, not just the processor. Together they can decode 1080p, like NVIDIA ION + a fast Atom can.

 

[psycholexx]

VIA actually is a specialist regarding low power and embedded computing, making a low power solution for portable low power computing shouldn't be so hard for them, and this new CPU line should stir up the competition on netbook market. These CPU will be aided by some Unichrome graphic chipsets which are rather good at video decoding, competing as an equal with AMD/ATI and Nvidia. The gameplay will be poor, but nobody buys an netbook to play Fallout 3 on it...

Lets see how big will be the adoption of the new CPU line on the market as is a known fact that Intel has a rather aggressive marketing, trying to put a stop on anything that could affect their sales.

 

[Guest]

(same guest poster from earlier) @kibaruk
Very true, but when manufacturers take the atom and place them in small desktop systems, one's expectations go a little beyond netbooks. This is where they fall desperately short on desktop responsiveness, but then, it would really be poor hardware profiling on the manufacturer's part. I am still not a fan of the part, an will wait for something better from ARM or VIA.
@ET3D
Not trying to get flamed, I do use windows, but my primary system is a Linux distro, so I think that specifically a CortexA9 smartbook could be a very nice experience.

 

[Regenweald]

So hold on, im confused whats better, more GHz or less?

Thanks to the processor wars, people have been convinced that banging out more clock cycles is the measure of a processor, but if you design an efficient processor and instruction set. Ghz becomes a secondary matter.

 

[slh28]

720p is more than enough for a netbook, I download and play movies in 720p on my 40in LCD and it looks great. I'm guessing the 1080p label is just to make it sound cool and so they can slap a "Full HD" logo on it.

 

[Kibaruk]

@Kibaruk "NETbook, the name says it all why can't people understand it."

What exactly does that mean. Does watching movies and using Netbeans somehow falls under "net" while gaming and video editing doesn't? Who defines this then?

I was stating what atom actually does to one of the posters.

A netbook is a NETbook, to stay connected, be able to surf the NET, that is the main purpose of it and that is why it is so small and have lots of connectivity gadgets like 3g, wifi, bluetooth. If you want more functionability you just get a power notebook, with dual or quad core, excesive ram and a nice non-integrated video card.

That is why new netbooks that are comming have even lower clocked cores (Atom Z520), to gain battery life over procesing power.

I mean... come on, who buys a 7" screen netbook to play games or edit video? There is a reason why 17" notebooks are there...

 

[RickD]

xclusiveitalian said:
1080p on a netbook sounds unessesary, I really thought peopleonly bought netbooks for one reason...the net

We often put our 6 year old in front of our netbook to watch a video on Netflix. Playing DVDs was one of our criteria when we evaluated netbooks.

 

[fref]

Does anyone knows how this compares to Intel's Atom? Could be nice to see some competition in the netbook segment.

 

[fadownjoo]

wow these look sick, cant wait till they r in netbooks.

 

[SNGX1275]

Does anyone knows how this compares to Intel's Atom? Could be nice to see some competition in the netbook segment.

From my post way up in the thread:

Don't get too excited, I've been saying that I'd like to see more netbooks with Nanos in them for a long time now. And its been known for a long time that the Nano is superior in lots of ways. I tried to find one of the reviews I looked at a long time ago, couldn't find the exact one I remember reading, but here is one from July 2008: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/reviews/2008/07/atom-nano-review.ars

So my point is, Via has had a superior product for over a year, and has made no gains in the marketplace. That implies that Intel has probably written into HP, Asus, Lenovo, Acer, whoever else makes netbooks that they can't produce ones with the Nano.

 

[Ju1iet]

I hope nVidia will support Nano CPUs with their ION platform as well as those Atoms. Then there will be a good competitor against Atom.

Though Intel doesn't support ION technology, it greatly increases the netbook's capabilities. Now they are working on hardware acceleration of HD Flash videos. I want to buy an ION for just this bit of feature.

I've got a question: Does ION platform support Intel SpeedStep? Or does the CPU always work at its highest clock?.I read that Intel doesn't give rights to 3rd companies to imply SpeedStep technology to their northbridge chips.

 

[ET3D]

Kibaruk said:
I was stating what atom actually does to one of the posters.

But that just proves that you're not using it for net only. And movie playback is getting a lot of attention on netbooks, and it's not a net thing. Sure, using the net is a major part of using netbooks, but it's also a major part of using power notebooks, or desktops, or pretty much any PC. I use the net a lot more on my home PC than I game, but that doesn't mean I want a PC that can't run games.

Why do people like you get hung on the name? I'm sure most people do non-net things on their netbook, be that writing documents or listening to music. If their netbooks were able to play games, they would have. In fact, I'm sure a lot of them are also playing flash games and maybe even Solitaire. So why shouldn't they play their favourite MMO (an obvious "net" activity) on their netbook? It's a completely illogical distinction.