schmidtbag:

I agree it's good to have them around, but if people think having them around is good for the sake of competition, that likely isn't going to be the case. Back when VIA released their last generation of x86 CPUs, nobody gave a crap, even though they had the cheapest and lowest wattage x86 quad cores. Possibly - I haven't heard of that. But considering that SIS, Nvidia, and whoever else I'm forgetting also stopped making chipsets at around the same time, I don't think the lawsuit had everything to do with it.

Intel changed their CPU-Chipset bus, and i'm not sure they licenced the new one, at all. This left Nvidia, Via, and many others, without any chipset-bus licences. They could still do AMD, but that would be all, iirc. Via's dual core and quad core designs weren't that bad, its just that they weren't available. I wanted some Pico-ITX boards, basically for what I have a Pi2/3 do today. Couldn't find any to buy anywhere. I suspect this chip is all based on the Centaur/Isiah tech iirc, of their last cores, and has been "updated" to a better process node, and has DDR4 and PCIe3 as well. The proof will be in the benchmarks.... edit: The other thing I worry about, is the GPU. S3, and DX11 only....it could still be better than Intels integrated GPU on the Atoms though 😉

schmidtbag:

I agree it's good to have them around, but if people think having them around is good for the sake of competition, that likely isn't going to be the case. Back when VIA released their last generation of x86 CPUs, nobody gave a crap, even though they had the cheapest and lowest wattage x86 quad cores.

Depends on people expectations, people expecting another competitor in the low end CPU market are going to be pleased, the others expecting a strong opponent for Intel.´s and AMD´s high end are going to be severely disappointed... I think VIA could make a "killing" if they manage to sell those CPUs on poor countries where people just want a cheap computer.

H83:

Depends on people expectations, people expecting another competitor in the low end CPU market are going to be pleased, the others expecting a strong opponent for Intel.´s and AMD´s high end are going to be severely disappointed... I think VIA could make a "killing" if they manage to sell those CPUs on poor countries where people just want a cheap computer.

As I said before, VIA has never made good desktop products, due to things like GPU and expansion limitations. They make great products, but only for niche industries. Most home users who want an ultra-small IoT device based on x86 are better off getting something like an Intel Galileo or an AMD Gizmo. Most home users who want an ultra-small and/or cheap HTPC or server are better off getting an ARM development board. There's just no market for VIA at home, which is why we never see them despite the fact that the company is still making sales. Since AMD now has a cheap energy-efficient modular x86 platform, we're actually even less likely to see VIA in home environments. At this rate, the only advantage VIA will have is size, where AMD's products are relatively gigantic.

For Via it is not problem licensing x86 or x64.The problem is the socket for PC-platform.In what socket they will put even if they make 3 times faster procesor in theory.Or will they solder procesor on the board.In that case future upgrade will be impossible.If they in some case make their own socket they must sell that platform in great quantity to make it profitabile.I think that procesor will be selling only in OEM or in industrial PC like nowdays.

McFly121:

For Via it is not problem licensing x86 or x64.The problem is the socket for PC-platform.In what socket they will put even if they make 3 times faster procesor in theory.Or will they solder procesor on the board.In that case future upgrade will be impossible.If they in some case make their own socket they must sell that platform in great quantity to make it profitabile.I think that procesor will be selling only in OEM or in industrial PC like nowdays.

Why does the socket matter? It's not like they intend to recycle anything made by Intel or AMD, and they have the resources to make their own. Their Eden, C3, and C7 CPUs all used in-house designs. Though I think some of their boards allow for swapping CPUs, most of them are BGA, and I don't think their customers really care about the lack of upgradability.

Fender178:

I thought that a lawsuit by Intel ended VIA's chipset making?

Actually Intel sued Nvidia and won,that was Que for rest of the pack ,SiS,VIA ... to stop producing chipset because Intel prohibit that,and later on AMD also forbid 3rd party chipsets.

the cyrix 200 for it's time was quiet competitive ... a neighbor had it my first pc was an inhell pentium 3 @ 666 (( a joke i used to do for my pIII 667)) with voodoo 3 2000 64 mb ram and QDI advance 10 with kt 133 .... and well schmidtbag you have a good point about their last cpus but i think people they care if they are competitive performance wise ! let's all hope for a miracle i guess !

Venix:

and well schmidtbag you have a good point about their last cpus but i think people they care if they are competitive performance wise ! let's all hope for a miracle i guess !

I would be absolutely thrilled to be proven wrong. If VIA manages to pull off decent enough performance to at least end up in a laptop, I would definitely buy it for the sake of supporting them. As I said before, I like VIA, but I don't think we're ever going to see them in the desktop market again, at least not in western countries. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but even AMD (who is much more devoted to x86) still hasn't resoundingly defeated Intel's aging architecture. A miracle really is the best way to describe VIA's success in the desktop market.

I have Cyrix and i remember VIA chipsets long time ago 😀 Welcome aboard 😛 But my First PC (as it is) was Amiga 2000 😉 then was A3000, and then downgrade (for gaming) to 486DX 32MB RAM, DOS & Norton Commander..

I had one of those Cyrix 6x86 PR200+, it was good until games started to use fpu calculations, like quake. Fpu performance on these were awful compared to Intel.

It will be really interesting if out of nowhere we have 3 viable companies to for our cpu needs although crossing my fingers xgi and 3dlabs tried to enter the gpus competitively and failed, gpus though but still as hard to do!

Great news! Hope they become true competitors to Intel and AMD.

intresting time coming , maybe prices will become palatable with more cpu makes

mbk1969:

It was a rhetorical question. IIRC back in old days neither VIA nor Cyrix were real competitors to Intel and AMD, and both companies` CPUs were low budget niche.

Actually, at one time, Cyrix could compete with Intel and AMD, in most operations, if you could keep their processors cool. They tended to have thermal issues and a rather poorly performing FPU, that got increasingly worse as the processor heated up. I actually had a very long discussion with the owner of a local shop (conveniently, the only one left in business near me) about the old 200mhz Cyrix and it's thermal issues many years ago.

Silva:

I believe in the performance when I see it. Sure, more competition is amazing, but if it was easy to just make a chip and compete with the likes of Intel/AMD, more companies would be doing it. If the price is right, I'm sure it will have it's place.

VIA has tried to compete with Intel and AMD in several markets. They've failed pretty consistently though. I don't expect this time to be any different.

Fender178:

I thought that a lawsuit by Intel ended VIA's chipset making?

Intel apparently sued VIA over patents and licensing concerning Pentium 3, Pentium 4 and AMD compatable chipsets. I'm sure there's other instances where Intel has sued VIA, but I'm too lazy to look. Intel seemed to make it a habit to sue VIA prior to their legal dealings with NVidia over the Core processor chipsets.

This is no longer a thread for VIA's comeback, but a thread to tell people how old (and wise) they feel thinking about when they owned their own VIA computer.

heffeque:

This is no longer a thread for VIA's comeback, but a thread to tell people how old (and wise) they feel thinking about when they owned their own VIA computer.

Most of us find it unlikely that VIA will be competitive. Based on VIA's track record, it's difficult to be optimistic about it. Sure, we'd all love to see more competition but VIA has never put in the necessary effort to actually be competitive and most of us don't expect this time to be any different. Hell, look at what VIA did to S3 Graphics....

Kind of seems like they are trying to get into the business market, but Intel has a huge dominance over that. Now this new security bug might be slowing that pace down, but there is AMD right behind Intel....

To get into the business market, they'll have to prove they can perform on par with Intel and AMD or better, while offering similar or better features and reliability/stability at a more cost effective price point. Security is likely going to be a bigger issue going forward as well given recent developments.

I do follow them for years. One should understand that those chips are not for gaming. They are reasonably power Efficient. But they have around 1/2 IPC in comparison to modern Core/Zen chips. It can be compared to 4C/8T Atom chip having all modern bells and whistles running @3GHz. It is similar to hoping that one day one of mobile GPU players who's chips do OGL/DX just fine will decide to invade into High Power Consumption desktop gaming market. But years before that we would see them invading x86_64 tablet, notebook markets. And they are not doing it. And instead of looking that much on VIA, I would consider: http://en.zhaoxin.com/ Since that is kind of "different" company. Those chips may be nice for some home media server, but aren't there already chips with similar performance and price on our markets?

vbetts:

Kind of seems like they are trying to get into the business market, but Intel has a huge dominance over that. Now this new security bug might be slowing that pace down, but there is AMD right behind Intel....

I did read fix performance impact on intel chips. It is in double digit space and not small one. Sadly fix is not kind of BIOS release, flash yourself. It is OS code protection and OS vendor decision which only minority of people manage to evade. Issue itself is not actually that bad as one has to have system already infected for attack to work. Yet protection will be very costly for intel chips in terms of performance. AMD practically unaffected. But As written above, Zhaoxin chips will still not touch intel's desktop chips feet due to much lower IPC and clock.

McFly121:

For Via it is not problem licensing x86 or x64.The problem is the socket for PC-platform.In what socket they will put even if they make 3 times faster procesor in theory.Or will they solder procesor on the board.In that case future upgrade will be impossible.If they in some case make their own socket they must sell that platform in great quantity to make it profitabile.I think that procesor will be selling only in OEM or in industrial PC like nowdays.

China, man... China. THat's intended market. That's market they are living for years. Volume is there.

May be their target market are: http://i64.tinypic.com/16by25t.jpg