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posted by n1 on Friday September 05 2014, @06:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the back-from-the-dead dept.

VIA is working on a new x86 compatible CPU codenamed Isaiah II, the first in years from the company. Its low power, highly efficient design compares favorably to offerings from AMD and Intel in the same market. It was tested on a VIA branded motherboard with a VIA chipset, giving hope to Free Software users who currently struggle with locked down or unsupported boards from the major manufacturers.

TechPowerUp compared VIA's Isaiah II against Intel's Atom Z3770 and AMD's Athlon 5350:

At 2.00 GHz, armed with the latest multimedia and cryptography instruction-sets, VIA's chip is faster than Intel's in most tests, despite lower clocks. It trades blows - and wins - against AMD's chip, in most tests. VIA is expected to launch the first chips based on Isaiah II in late-August, 2014. VIA is hedging its bets with efficient compact PCs, kiosks, and digital signage, with its new chip.

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  • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday September 05 2014, @06:39AM

    by jimshatt (978) on Friday September 05 2014, @06:39AM (#89713) Journal
    I don't see the connection with Free Software. Are the specs freely available? There is no mention of any of that in TFA...
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @06:50AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @06:50AM (#89718)

      New VIA CPU/Chipset Might Be A Good Alternative for Alternative Fans

      FTFY

      Down with mainstream everything!

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Friday September 05 2014, @03:34PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Friday September 05 2014, @03:34PM (#89855)

        New VIA CPU/Chipset Might Be A Good Alternative for Alternative Fans

        I really don't see what any of this has to do with Green Day or Alanis Morrisette.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 1) by arashi no garou on Friday September 05 2014, @06:42PM

      by arashi no garou (2796) on Friday September 05 2014, @06:42PM (#89921)

      I said "might be" for this reason. I'm being cautiously optimistic, despite VIA's track record.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by evilviper on Friday September 05 2014, @06:50AM

    by evilviper (1760) on Friday September 05 2014, @06:50AM (#89717) Homepage Journal

    At 2.00 GHz, armed with the latest multimedia and cryptography instruction-sets, VIA's chip is faster than Intel's in most tests, despite lower clocks.

    Don't EVER believe Via's claims... Via (and Cyrix before them) always figures out a way to lie in their marketing and screw you over. Things like the C3 they aggressively advertised as being as fast as Intel/AMD CPUs... You don't find out until you use on that it's not, at least in-part because the FPU is only half as fast.

    They make the SAME DAMN CLAIM with ever CPU they've ever released, and it always proves to be wrong. Just think how utterly absurd it is on it's face... The humongous Intel, spending BILLIONS on developing its x86 CPUs and staying a couple generations ahead in fab technology, getting soundly beat in every metric by Via's team of part-time CPU developers? Seriously? How can you not just laugh in their faces when they make such completely bull-crap claims???

    Go check some old benchmark compilations that include Via CPUs... They always lag significantly behind contemporary processors.

    http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=VIA+C7-D+2000MHz&id=1761 [cpubenchmark.net]

    And though we don't see it here, don't buy their power consumption figures, either, because those are equally exaggerated.

    giving hope to Free Software users who currently struggle with locked down or unsupported boards from the major manufacturers.

    I can't imagine how "free OS fans" benefit... With both AMD and Intel, you can buy their motherboards/chipsets, and they are at least mostly documented with working open source drivers available.

    Now, if ALL of Via's boards were fully-supported by CoreBoot/LinuxBios, that would be interesting to "Free OS Fans" and embedded systems developers. Otherwise, this sounds like their desperate attempt to get

    --
    Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @08:30AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @08:30AM (#89737)

      Otherwise, this sounds like their desperate attempt to get

      Your dog ate the rest of the article?
      Your cat played with the mouse and clicked "submit" before you were finished?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @08:33AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @08:33AM (#89739)

        Err ...

        Your dog ate the rest of the article?

        Should of course have read:

        Your dog ate the rest of the comment?

        Muphry's Law at work, I guess.

    • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Friday September 05 2014, @08:59AM

      by tonyPick (1237) on Friday September 05 2014, @08:59AM (#89745) Homepage Journal

      And though we don't see it here, don't buy their power consumption figures, either, because those are equally exaggerated.

      Yeah - particularly since the parts they're comparing against are an Atom (TDP quoted at 4W) and a low end desktop AMD (25W). Without an idea of the power envelope this chip could be sitting anywhere in the "comparable chips" range...

    • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday September 05 2014, @04:12PM

      by opinionated_science (4031) on Friday September 05 2014, @04:12PM (#89867)

      I think you just explained how marketing works, and why we don't need it....!

      A simple table of specs on the website will do....

    • (Score: 1) by malloc_free on Friday September 05 2014, @06:04PM

      by malloc_free (3034) on Friday September 05 2014, @06:04PM (#89905) Journal

      Don't know if this really equates, but I recall AMD owning Intel around 1999 with the release of the Athlon. Intel have a habit of resting on their laurels when they don't have any competition. Then again there is ARM who they have been doing some catchup with lately in the low power/mobile department so this may not be the same situation.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by deimios on Friday September 05 2014, @07:57AM

    by deimios (201) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 05 2014, @07:57AM (#89731) Journal

    The last time I met a VIA chipset was with an S3 integrated graphics chip that was unsupported on linux. Suffice to say that motherboard didn't die a natural death...

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by rfree on Friday September 05 2014, @08:14AM

    by rfree (4618) on Friday September 05 2014, @08:14AM (#89734)

    This (soylentnews) article lacks the punchline, it gives the premise that VIA chip is more open source or less locked down, but then doesn't say a word about it.

    • (Score: 1) by arashi no garou on Friday September 05 2014, @06:46PM

      by arashi no garou (2796) on Friday September 05 2014, @06:46PM (#89922)

      Yes, I could have been more clear in the summary that it's my hope that VIA pulls a rabbit out of their hat with this one, and ships F/OSS friendly drivers. Nothing is guaranteed with that company.

      That said, for those looking for a good, cheap headless server, I bet it will fit the bill nicely.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by acharax on Friday September 05 2014, @11:30AM

    by acharax (4264) on Friday September 05 2014, @11:30AM (#89778)

    Last time I used anything by VIA it was an absolute stability mayhem, their hardware always came with interesting specs (and a very low price), but neither of these can offset a machine deciding it's alright to boot only every 4th or 5th try (and not going past POST otherwise). They might have good reasons to open up their specs (if they indeed intend to do so), they used to be be notorious for releasing drivers that didn't support all of the respective hardware's features back in the day. Perhaps they've changed over the years, but I prefer to remain (very) sceptical.

    Disclaimer: I am biased because of my experience with their stuff.

    • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday September 05 2014, @03:21PM

      by DECbot (832) on Friday September 05 2014, @03:21PM (#89851) Journal

      I must be the odd man out. I'm running two Jetway motherboards with Via C7 processors for years without issues. One is a samba file server running Ubuntu 12.04 and the other runs Apache, mysql, php, dovecot, and postfix on Debian Wheezy. They work well for my needs at a fairly constant 30W each. Granted, if the servers were used by more than me, I might have issues. Also, I highly discourage running a graphical desktop. It was à pretty good buy for a low power headless system.

      --
      cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base