The Atom impressed many when it was released earlier this year, quickly becoming a prime choice for anyone building low-power PCs. It was directly competing with Via's Nano because of this. Some initial performance benchmarks showed the Atom as quite more potent than the Nano, though Via claimed there were other reasons involved such as defective hardware used in some benchmarks.

Via wants a second chance, and new benchmarks pitting the Atom against the Nano show some very interesting results. Specifically, when competing against the single-core Atom, the Nano actually comes ahead in just about everything – it isn't until the dual-core Atom enters that the Nano has something to worry about. Coupled with the fact that Via's boards are more expandable than Intel's, the Nano certainly has plenty of room to roam.

The Nano also managed to best the Atom in idle power consumption, an important figure for people who want to use them for always-on systems like media center PCs. Performance aside, it is good to see that Via has not been ousted from the market by the Atom.