Do you cheer for the underdog? Would you love to see VIA unseat Intel in the battle for the hearts and minds of netbook market share just because Intel’s, well, Intel? Good, then you’ll love this highly emotive video produced by VIA showing its meager 1.3GHz Nano processor kicking Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom to the curb in a 1080p HD video test. We’d be more suspect of the results had we not already seen VIA clean Intel’s house in the head-to-head benchmarks. Now pull up a seat ringside and get ready to sputter along with the Atom-based netbook

Nano vs Atom Video

Netbooks based on VIA’s Nano mobile processor aren’t nearly as common as those based on Intel’s Atom, but based on the benchmarking that’s been going on recently, that’s a shame, since the Nano appears to be much faster than the Atom 230. PC Perspective, Eee PC News, and Hot Hardware all ran some tests recently, and a 1.8GHz Nano L2100 with Chrome9 graphics was usually able to outperform a 1.6GHz Atom 230 with GMA950 graphics at everything from MP3 ripping to 3D benchmarking. Of course, that’s not without a tradeoff — the Nano was a bit more power-hungry, and the Atom’s memory and graphics systems were occasionally faster than the Nano’s. Still, it seems like the Nano has more raw horsepower than the Atom — and it’s pin-compatible with VIA’s popular C7M, so hopefully we’ll be seeing machines like HP’s Mini-Note make the jump relatively soon.

Via has released the details of its successor to the Nanobook, called the Openbook.

It’s a reference design that will be re-badged and tweaked by manufacturers just like the Nanobook was (Belinea’s S.book 1 and Packard Bell’s Easynote XS used Via’s older design).

Powered by the VIA C7-M ULV processor and the VIA VX800 digital media IGP chipset, the VIA OpenBook mini-note reference design is a small, 1kg, 8.9″ mini-notebook form factor design that supports screen resolutions of up to 1024×600 and high performance VIA Chrome9™

DirectX™ 9.0 3D graphics. Advanced video acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, VC1 and DiVX video formats, a VMR capable HD video processor and 8-channel HD audio make it a highly media rich mini-notebook platform.

http://www.viaopenbook.com

Bad news, Atom fans. That dual-core nugget of netbook-powering goodness that you were so looking forward to seeing in Q3 won’t begin shipping until Q4. According to some data picked up by Fudzilla, the Atom 330 will only be debuting in Q3 (September 21st, to be precise), but it isn’t scheduled to get a shipping label until a few months later. Also of note, we’re told that the chip will sell (at some place in the supply chain) for $43, but don’t count on those savings being completely passed onto you.

Today VIA announced the VIA Nano processor family based on the VIA Isaiah Architecture.

Building on the market-leading energy efficiency of the VIA C7 processor family, the VIA Nano processor family offers as much as four times the performance within the same power range to extend VIA’s performance per watt leadership, while pin compatibility with VIA C7 processors will ensure a smooth transition for OEMs and motherboard vendors, and provides them with an easy upgrade path for current system or board designs.

The chip is going to be offered with a 800Mhz front side bus and clock speeds from 1.0GHz to 1.8GHz. The release also states the Maximum Power requirements (TDP Max) from 5W to 25W depending on the clock speed. The release also contains some of the additional features including 64-bit Out-of-Order MicroArchitecture, VIA Padlock Security Engine, and PowerSaver Technology. Click the link above for the full release.

Hp2133guide.com is reporting some interesting news on the isaiah chip, snippets from the article.

Isaiah will consumer more power than Intel’s Atom processor

I wonder if it requires the same amount of power as the C7.

“It’s (Isaiah) between two and four times the performance of C7. So, it’ very, very close to (Intel’s) Core 2. Core 2 solo (single core)”

Read the full article at hp2133guide