VIA released the new VIA VN1000 digital media chipset. According the company's claims, this chipset consumes a total of only 12 watts of power for both north and south bridges when paired with the new VIA VT8261 south bridge, and is compatible with all VIA Nano, VIA C7, VIA C7-M and VIA Eden processors. In addition, the chipset differentiates itself from other products through featuring DirectX 10.1-capable graphics.

"The VIA VN1000 leverages our optimized VIA Nano 3000 Series processors, creating the most balanced, power-efficient, multimedia-focused desktop platform on the market today," Richard Brown, VP International Marketing, VIA Technologies, said. "Supporting the latest system memory, graphics and entertainment standards, the VIA VN1000 takes the VIA processor platform to new heights of power-efficient visual sophistication."

The VIA VN1000 is capable of using its modest 12W of power to handle all of its resources, as many as they are. The chipset supports DDR3 memory clocks of 1066MHz, up to five PCI slots, an IDE controller and up to four SATA II drives. In addition, it has one x8 and four x1 lanes for PCI Express II expansion slots and can power an SD/MMS/MMC card reader, 12 USB 2.0 ports, PS/2, SPI, GPIO and LPC technologies and it even has the VIA Vinyl HD 8 channel audio codec.

Now comes the most noteworthy element of VIA's product, namely the VIA Chrome 520 IGP, which not only has DirectX 10.1 capabilities, but also supports Shader Model 4, OpenGL 3.0 and even OpenCL 1.0 for next-generation GPGPU applications. The chipset also integrates the ChromotionHD 2.0 video processor.

This processor makes use of the latest Display Port and HDMI display technologies and is even capable of hardware acceleration for the H.264, WM9 and VC1 codecs. These features make the VIA VN1000 perfectly capable of running even the latest MPEG-4/AVC, H.264, MPEG-2, VC-1, WMV-HD, and AVS Blu-ray media content.

Finally, the chipset also offers support for DVP, VGA and LVDS/TMDS, besides the already mentioned Display Port and HDMI. Through its perfect combination of low-power design and DirectX 10.1 graphics, the VIA VN1000 is a perfect choice for mini desktop PCs and all-in-one systems running Windows 7, especially configurations focused on multimedia and touch capabilities. Complete information on the chipset may be found on VIA's official website.