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The Nano looked extremely impressive. I waited years for hardware to hit shelves, and to this day the options are pretty much a null set. I'd buy up an Isaiah

by i80and 12y ago

The Nano looked extremely impressive. I waited years for hardware to hit shelves, and to this day the options are pretty much a null set. I'd buy up an Isaiah II board in a heartbeat, of course, but one of the biggest problems facing them in the consumer space (aside from all the marketing issues) is graphics. Intel and AMD both have extremely high-quality on-die graphics now, and to the best of my knowledge VIA cannot compete on that front.

voidlogic 12y ago
I thought VIAs graphics package was decent and based on tech they got via S3?
- arjie 12y ago
  All I remember are the Via Unichrome series which made me feel like punching myself in the face just to relieve myself of the pain that their drivers caused me. It took a lot of work from the OpenChrome folks to make it usable.
- i80and 12y ago
  Hardly; they bought S3 after S3 realized they couldn't compete in 3D anymore. As far as I can determine, the Chrome 645 is their top-of-the-line integrated chip, which is absolutely blown out of the water[1] by even the anemic Intel Sandy Bridge chips from three generations ago. And let's not even mention the driver situation... [1]: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=VIA%2FS3G+Chrome+645%2F640+GPU&id=1962 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=VIA%2...
  - ibrahima 12y ago
    Haha, I got an S3 prototype card from a friend's dad who worked there once, it was pretty awful. I think it was supposed to be around the performance level of a Radeon 9600 but it really wasn't, and it was pretty crashy too (though to be fair, he did say it was a prototype).
sspiff 12y ago
Agreed. Their lacking graphics hardware (and drivers) are probably the main reason why they focus on boutiques, bingo machines and other coin-ops. No clue if they improved their graphics as well for this iteration. They really should have acquired (or be acquired by) a vendor of decent embedded graphics (Imagination or Qualcomm?), but at this point there's very little chance of that still happening. They already sold S3 to the closely linked HTC I believe.

by i80and 12y ago

voidlogic 12y ago

I thought VIAs graphics package was decent and based on tech they got via S3?

arjie 12y ago
All I remember are the Via Unichrome series which made me feel like punching myself in the face just to relieve myself of the pain that their drivers caused me. It took a lot of work from the OpenChrome folks to make it usable.
i80and 12y ago
Hardly; they bought S3 after S3 realized they couldn't compete in 3D anymore. As far as I can determine, the Chrome 645 is their top-of-the-line integrated chip, which is absolutely blown out of the water[1] by even the anemic Intel Sandy Bridge chips from three generations ago. And let's not even mention the driver situation... [1]: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=VIA%2FS3G+Chrome+645%2F640+GPU&id=1962 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=VIA%2...
- ibrahima 12y ago
  Haha, I got an S3 prototype card from a friend's dad who worked there once, it was pretty awful. I think it was supposed to be around the performance level of a Radeon 9600 but it really wasn't, and it was pretty crashy too (though to be fair, he did say it was a prototype).

sspiff 12y ago

Agreed. Their lacking graphics hardware (and drivers) are probably the main reason why they focus on boutiques, bingo machines and other coin-ops. No clue if they improved their graphics as well for this iteration. They really should have acquired (or be acquired by) a vendor of decent embedded graphics (Imagination or Qualcomm?), but at this point there's very little chance of that still happening. They already sold S3 to the closely linked HTC I believe.