VIA Brings Enhanced Windows 7 Desktop to Life with Power Efficient DX10.1 Chipset

[pr0n Inspector]

I am unable to get excited over anything from VIA, it's just not possible.

 

[DaJMasta]

a EEE uses 40W

A dualcore 2 ghz core 2 with a hd 3450 or a nvidia accelerator uses less than 60.

An EEE has a 36W power adapter so it can safely charge the battery and run at full load and maximum screen brightness and still be safely within it's limits. Even with the screen bright and the volume cranked you'd be hard pressed to get an EEEpc over 20W full load.

The second sounds about right though.


12W is only a good figure because of the computational power that provides. The original Atom platform used about that amount, but this nano and this igp can give quite tangible performance increases (30-50% with the CPU, probably more than 100% with the GPU) over the atom at the same power consumption.

 

[MrMilli]

But as you certainly know not all shaders are created equal and the same goes for CPU architectures. I also don't really know where you found the numbers for the shader clocks, they may very well be running faster than the core speed, but the discrete chrome 530 gt is clocked at 625MHz so I'd expect the core speed to be lower than that in an IGP. You've also got the shared memory bus (despite it being dual channel DDR3.... potentially as it supports from single channel ddr2 to dual channel ddr3), so it's not going to have anywhere near the bandwidth of this discrete card, which in gaming situations looses out to the lowest end discrete cards from it's competitors.
http://forums.s3chromezone.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=591

I know it's conjecture to say that the discrete version is slower than it's discrete competitors so the integrated version would follow in suit, but I don't think it's entirely inaccurate. The ION has the strongest GPU of them with a 9400M class IGP, while AMD's HD3200 integrated probably looses out (but a slightly upclocked 4200 may be plenty to beat it). That being said, we're considering platforms, and the Nano is an Atom competitor, not a CULV/Neo competitor. While it is computationally faster clock for clock than an atom (some benchmarks say by a fair amount, most say by a little) the Neo and CULV chips are based of of *real* desktop architectures.... so they will be much more computationally capable and number crunching is what you need for multimedia.

In other words, no clear winner comes out on top for these platforms, intel and AMD's options can duke it out for overall computational power while the ION takes the cake for graphics horsepower. Still if they can get a decent price, good availability, and decent drivers VIA will at least be a competitor this time around.

Also I thought the ION could do DDR3 (and could do dual channel) but it wasn't being implemented much in the marketplace.

S3 Chrome 500 series runs the shader domain around 40% faster than the base clock. So that would make around 700Mhz for this chipset.

It's pretty easy to make a comparison:
- The Chrome 540 (32 shaders) has similar performance to the HD 4350 (80 shaders) but is higher clocked
- IGP 780G & 785G have 40 shaders and have the same performance
- IGP 785G has similar performance to GF9300 IGP and GF9400 IGP is a bit faster (around 10%)
- All IGP's have similar bandwidth at their disposal

Taking into account that the Chrome 520 IGP has a 37.5% lower clock compared to the 540 but the same amount of shaders.
Taking into account that the HD 4200 IGP has a 13% lower clock compared to the HD 4350 but half the amount of shaders.

Just going by these numbers, the Chrome 520 IGP would be around 40% faster than the HD 4200 IGP. That would also mean faster than the GF9400 IGP.

I know GPU performance is not easy math like i just did but my numbers do give a good indication of what to expect. I'm pretty sure it won't be slower than the 785G or GF9300IGP.
nVidia's ION is even a bit lower clocked than the GF9300IGP (450/1100 vs 450/1200).

A Via Nano 3000 + VN1000 combo would seriously outperform an Atom + ION combo at similar power levels. Let's just hope someone is brave enough to make it.

 

[kylzer]

I was just wondering the other day what VIA was up to. I'm glad they've released something noteworthy.

I see what you did there