Mini-ITX 2.0, VIA Nano Plays Crysis

[kris10ish]

FUCK YOU DUDE why are you HURTING the TURTLE you rapist

[screener545]

Looks like I found my self a wow server board small enough to stack in my shelf

[Giorgio4M]

nice check mine video 

[syrupykeyboard]

Considering it's a chip intended for use in sub-notebooks and embedded systems, I'm impressed. Reading up on the two competing architectures it's easy to see why Nano is pulling ahead. It's got an 8 stage out-of-order pipeline that's half the length of Atom's and so less penalty for branch mis-prediction. 4 fetches and 3 issues per cycle while atom takes at least 3 cycles just to fetch. More functional units. It's cool to see someone giving Chipzilla a run for their money.

[jathomas0910]

i mean the gpu is doing all the work tho....lame

[3rain3ug]

Good job

[doct0rthrill]

via is a joke. who would spend that much money on a poor performing product with millions of issues. Via stands for low quality. All of the via products i ever own have major problems. The only solution i found is to sell it and buy something else.

[LeJimster]

hilarious really. Most of the footage shown of them playing crysis is actually the pre-rendered video cutscenes that is shown at the beginning of crysis before you actually play the game. The little clips where they were actually playing in game you could see the framerate was painfully low + they never showed a proper ingame battle against enemies. My guess? is the pc would have grinded to a halt. So don't try kidding us VIA, we know better :P

[tranceemerson]

lol props

[hanrinch]

it says neno is "capable" of running crysis. doesn't mean people would actually use itx for gaming

[SirRasor]

Not quite right. The GF 8600 GT holds it back this badly.

[lukealderton19]

Woudnt grind to a halt, a bit of lag at max, lawl, and yeah i have an itx computer running windows 7 64bit, it plays crysis fine with a 1gb 8800gt xD

[HavokSage]

Lies...

 Thats the intro cutscene not Crysis gameplay.

[sh3nii]

Obviously they wouldn't show gameplay.. like the dude will really have time to sit there and play the game and show off everything.... its called marketing =P lol

P.S. stop being such a nerd!!

[QuantumCarl]

Most other companies have that kind of time, it's called being in depth.

He didn't show it cause he know it would just suck all kinds of balls.

[veoeluz]

Umm.. its really funny how you only get to see like 3 seconds worth of actual gameplay; the rest is cinematics, which DOES NOT COUNT. The gameplay looked horrible, and the framerate wasn't even near 20. I'd say its about accurate for something that size. I mean, yeah, its smaller, but it really doesn't have THAT much power.

[putertronikz]

honestly the only solution the the incompatibility and power draw mess is to make radeon mobile cards and laptop cpus fit and work on atx motherboards

any desktop chip over 45 watts will eventually fuck the motherboard chips and caps or crash the system by burning the the ram with the microwaves

coming from the cpu.

save the atom chips for mini and nano itx

fit all mobile chips on ATX boards.

[QuantumCarl]

You have no clue what you're talking about. Nice.

[ZerqTM]

As a VIA customer i urge via to replace there support website with a page clearly directing the user to "Go stick your head in a pig"

it would be a lot more honest then there current pretense at offering any thing more then inacurate documentation.

[QuantumCarl]

Oh man!

"Go stick your head in a pig"! XD

That is hilarious.

And all too accurate.

[ZerqTM]

there tech support just blatantly ignores you completly!

And you dont even recive a mail confirming your support request!

Its like talking to a stone wall!

There useless!

I might hate intel.. but i am growing to hate via many times more!

[doct0rthrill]

I feel your pain. Via has no tech support, only forums. Some people there are actually quite knowledgeable and useful. However, Via makes low quality products and there is nothing anyone can do about. My solution is get something else.

[ZerqTM]

watch?v=TphHPqwXST0

VIA are missleading bastards!

I damand my SATA power cable!

[commodore256]

Hey, what did that Turtle do to him?

[clays121]

This just Awsome, VIA just needs to market itself better, and back into talks with Nvidia about making some GPU chips for the motherboards. Then we could have some low cost low/mid range game machines, on the market that don't crap out like the Xbox 360. Yeah i know this platform is ment for a normal pc, but think about it really.

[tipoomaster]

The Nano obliderates the Atom in benchmarks. the Atom may draw less power, but its amost always paired with a cheap power-hungry chipset, so the Nano actualy takes the advantage there too. its too bad Intel is working their advertising magic again and no companies are using the Nano.

[rockapartie]

heard about nvidia's ion-platform? they're working on an atom-version as well as another one featuring the nano. nano & 9400gm -> gaming netbooks! unbelievable ^^

[museshowbiz]

sure thats cool and all but really... it defeats the purpose of mini-itx... you would have to use a full sized psu, massive graphics card and it would radiat alot of heat... the idea is to think small and simple.... its technically a standard size computer now....

[vic2587]

I disagree. The boards still have integrated graphics, so you can keep it as small as you want. The option to add a graphics card is definitely something that would appeal to the casual gamer, a gamer who loves small computers, or the regular user who likes eye candy!

[vic2587]

The power supply would not need to be ATX and excessively high wattage. The mini-itx platform itself does not consume too much power, so a lot of the power required in the system would be for the graphics card.

This new spec is great, it keeps the original dimensions while adding functionality.

[rockapartie]

that's just a demo... nvidia ion-platform will use the integrated graphics-solution 9400m... netbooks with hdmi and capable for gaming... unfuckingbelievable!!!

[QuantumCarl]

I really want an ION setup. D:

[Controlremotehp]

Can I already but this?

[SamTadNewman]

That's amazing!

[djmoon2069]

Awesome!

Games are one thing,

but I am waiting to see how this new spec

handles Audio & VIDEO editing!

LOVE mini-itx, & excited to see it,

either way!

*(except for the -possible- "OUCH!" price...;)

[humantestdummy]

na not really man they have ones that can support quad core amd and only cost like 120 :)

[marctulley]

that was mostly the crysis intro video....which is not polygons its a video. my old dell laptop could play that.

[pronzie283]

Any news on the mini itx motherboards with the ati 780G chipset yet?

[0989089098]

"I'm excited" so enthusiastic

[8309400]

the point is to be able to power your mini pc with a solar cell while getting the same performance youd get with a quad core and 98oo gtx this is possible with ssds noy yo metion mini pcs comming with usb3 and display port

power efficient performance bombs you can power on a soalr panel

[Hephasteus9]

No way. 9800 GTX uses more power than 3 fairly fast mini itx boards with large memory 2gb 4gb.

You're talking about 20 watt processors, 20 to 30 watt memory systems and 150 watt video cards.

You'd need a solar array to power it. To run it 24/7 you'd need 2 to 4 100 amp/hour AGM batteries, 600 watt inverter, and 8 to 12 60 watt panels depending if you lived in desert or average cloudy area. You could never run this solar in washington/seattle area or around great lakes.

[Colegade]

That's just badass.

[carnagerpm]

can i use a ATI card?

[spencerpoyle2004]

yes, duh

[spencerpoyle2004]

only 25, wow! its a shame that the graphics card will use about 50 - 130 watts, hopefully they will bring out an atom graphics card =D.

by the way how many watts can an average 12v battery output?

[GTAfreAk112]

atom o_O lets overclock that xD

[spencerpoyle2004]

i heard the 1.6ghz goes up to about 1.9ghz but im sure it could go a lot higher if the motherboard allowed voltage ajustments!!

[GTAfreAk112]

but what if u dont cool good, u get a mini atom bomb!?

[spencerpoyle2004]

lolololol! well the low power comsumption will help with that, in theory in its overclocked state it will consume an extra watt or two so it shouldnt be that bad.

ha ha mini atom bomb, brilliant!!

[sintaxera]

car battery? thousands. its the duration that matters. Starter motors are around 1-2 kilowatts or more depending on the engine.

1amp = 12 watts. 60amps = 720w

so a 60amp/hour battery could run 720w for 1 hour., 360w for 2 hours, 180w for 4 hours, 90w for 8 hours etc.

Also, the cabling to the power supply matters. 8gauge can supply 50amps with minimal voltage drop in the cable.

If you were running in a car, a 200amp alternator would be a good idea. = 2400w = house wall current.

[spencerpoyle2004]

oh so its not a convienient alternative to a laptop unless you strap a car battery to your back, that also throws my theory of running an xbox 360 on batteries out the window. well thanks for that, thats some usefull infomation!!

[sintaxera]

laptop batteries...now theres an idea. youd have to make a power supply to take the higher voltages tho :)

[spencerpoyle2004]

all you would have to do is make a transformer out of some copper or something

[sintaxera]

unfortunately transformers only work on alternating current (which is why houses use AC, it can be sent from the powerplant at low amp high voltage and transformed to high amp low voltage near your house), and batteries work on direct current :P

[spencerpoyle2004]

theres a mini-itx motherboard with a pci-e slot??

[superkroll]

yep, with PCI-E, minimum of 2 GB Ram required, full 64 Bit support and the processor with max. 25 watt. very cool, eh?

[MaxiMachine]

same desktop background as maxi! =D

[drawingmaniac21]

amazing

[nelson112233]

put a 9800gx2

[joyx81]

fake

[Booshibonton]

Don't hurt the fucking turtle! D:

[QuantumCarl]

Koreans just don't give a SHIT about wild life.

[nashith]

NVidia needs to buy VIA to compete with Intel...

[side8side]

I would love to see a nano processor used in a mini notebook.

[aussiebear22]

Yeah, that would be awesome.

Replace VIA C7 with the newer VIA Nano in the HP 2133 Mini-note.

[spencerpoyle2004]

the eee 901 is using it

[blacklabelsk8erX]

Thought it used Atom.

[Zoyxx]

8600 GT is rated at 43 watts. The vid card they used is passive cooled. 9600 GT is rated at 98 watts... probably the reason for using the 8600 GT. With the Nano rated at 25 watts, we are easily under 100 watts for the entire system. Makes running Crysis, even at low settings, that much more impressive.

[munic1]

wow...

coool..

[PridhamPro]

What were the settings of Crysis that the computer was playing at?

[WatchmanBR]

This awesome! VIA has been doing an excelent job in the low-consumption market.

I don't like nVidea very much, they've been consistently lying about their products since the days of the 5x00 series (at least). But I'd LOVE to see nVidia and Via joining forces to compete with Intel and AMD.

Competition, you never get enough.

[MidnightMarrow]

Using an 8600 is just plain stupid...

[RichGilly]

That is the first thing I thought too, but their processor is only 1.8GHz... soooo... It isn't exactly l33t anyway. The FPS was just barely playable.

I would have used a 9600GT, or a 8800GT.

[phixcoco]

VIA Mini-ITX currently isn't capable of playing DX10 games, but you can use an add-in board to make it! But I'm afraid the processor is the bottleneck if you wanna play Crysis with high settings on Mini-ITX with NV's 8800GT...

waiting for more reviews:P

[MidnightMarrow]

Im sorry but those 8600's blow I for some reason doubt the cpu will bottle neck that haha.

Also its not about the speed its the architecture the way it handles data is what gives it its true speed.

Either way you wanna look at it if your gonna tech demo a system you really should put the best graphics hardware in it as possible.

[reh1971]

That thing rocks! Take that, gnatom :-)

[wongsmokesbong]

lol you coulda used a longer music clip instead of looping a really short one...