We have fallen in love with Intel's Atom 230 processor, a tiny powerhouse delivering one.6GHz of power on a motherboard the dimension of an open DVD case. It exhibits a great deal of guarantee for the future of home computing: at last a media centre-capable Pc in a little sufficient form element that won't look and sound like you've received an electrical power substation sitting subsequent to your Television.
But the Atom-powered board isn't without having a important difficulty - in that it only has assistance for the positively Neanderthal PCI graphics slot, as opposed to the far a lot more modern PCI-E. It is a severe, deliberate hobbling of the platform by Intel that does have an effect on its performance as a media centre Computer: it couldn't handle latest video games, and could only run 1080p video with a firm overclocking boot up the processor's behind.
Admittedly, we have been slightly skeptical about Via's most recent venture: the company has a spotted historical past, to say the least. From severe technical difficulties making use of their earlier processors with AGP graphics cards, to an almost-business-destroying patent wrangle with Intel suffice to say By way of is at the infamous end of chip companies.
Fortunately, the Nano appears set to put all that animosity in the previous, and shows the organization is finding its feet once again. The Nano makes use of the exact same C7 architecture as Via's previous mini-CPUs, and therefore is backward compatible with older mini-ITX motherboards. The Epia motherboard itself contains Via's newest CN896 Northbridge, which is exactly where the PCI-Express help lies, as nicely as an onboard VGA port. Alas, there is no built-in DVI port as of yet - a chief complaint of a colleague is that he would be unable to plug in a Television tuner card and output high definition broadcasts at the exact same time.
As with the Atom motherboard, the Epia includes passive cooling on the processor itself, and has one tiny minimal-electrical power fan on the Northbridge. The Nano achieves this by instantly scaling the performance and voltage states based mostly on the temperature of the die, which leads to optimum cooling with out affecting efficiency. Not only does this quit your computer melting but it also optimizes the electrical power consumption of the processor - the Nano will draw a minimum of 5W, and maximum of 25W. So in spite of not quite equaling the Atom from a straight overall performance angle, it stands head and shoulders over on the energy/overall performance ratio.
A drama out of a Crysis
But there's 1 thing we have neglected to mention: the Nano will run Crysis. We coupled the board with an ATI 4850 and a gig of ram then ran Crysis in DX9 with all settings on ‘high'. It accomplished an astonishing common of twenty frames per 2nd - which admittedly isn't that smooth, but is at least playable. There was some somewhat odd blurring around the HUD, but for the most part the South China Sea looked as good as we would expect from a completely fledged bargain Pc. Higher definition 720p video playback was acceptable, but the processor's touted capacity to perform back 1080p fell a little brief, with videos enjoying slowly. An overclocked processor may have handled the full 24 frames per second, but our test model didn't give tweaking the BIOS as an alternative. Nonetheless, with a cheap graphics card occupying the PCI-E slot the GPU will be capable to take the strain of HD playback without a difficulty.
Through certainly has the technical clout to knock Intel's Atom out of the ring, but it lacks Intel's canny advertising and brand recognition. If By way of can smooth out the niggles we knowledgeable on the processor and card, it'll undoubtedly be a winner the Nano could be the product that launches Through into the stratosphere.
