VIA’s Nano faces off against Atom

When the Nano processor (formerly known as Isaiah) was first introduced back in May, VIA declared a performance victory over Intel’s then upcoming Atom line of chips. Today is the first time that the two technologies actually go head-to-head against each other, however, putting VIA’s big claims to the test.

PC Perspective, HardOCP, and Hot Hardware all took an Intel Atom 230 (1.6GHz) processor and pitted it against a VIA Nano L2100 (1.8GHz) chip. Though there were some unavoidable differences in the configurations (the Nano was clocked higher than the Atom and each had to be paired with a different GPU), VIA’s product was usually able to outperform the Atom in most of the tests.

The Atom does have the upper hand when it comes to power consumption, with it using up to 19 fewer watts than VIA’s chip under load – a very important factor to consider with mobile computing devices. Even so, the new Nano is certainly a big step forward for VIA and brings more competition to the market. Click on the links above to see the tiny chips put to the test.