VIA Launches First Ever Dual Core Pico-ITX Motherboard
It's the industry's first Pico-ITX board with dual core processing, claims VIA.
Wednesday VIA Technologies revealed an "industry first" with the launch of its new 64-bit dual-core VIA EPIA-P900 Pico-ITX board. It features a 1 GHz VIA Eden X2 CPU along with the VIA VX900H Media System Processor, all crammed on a board measuring just 10cm x 7.2cm.
According to VIA, the new board supports up to 4 GB of DDR3 memory, HD audio, HDMI (1080p), VGA and single-channel 24-bit LVDS display connectivity. There's even a high performance hardware HD video decoder via the latest VIA ChromotionHD 2.0 video engine.
"The VIA ChromotionHD 2.0 engine provides advanced filtering and cutting edge post-processing to perform ultra smooth decoding of H.264, MPEG-2, VC-1, WMV9, and HDCP for Blu-ray content protection providing smooth playback of the most demanding multimedia titles at resolutions up to 1080p without incurring a heavy CPU load," VIA said Wednesday. "The VIA EPIA-P900 features the VIA Vinyl VT2021, a 10 channel HD audio codec, delivering outstanding sound quality and support for Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Content Protection."
As for other features, the EPIA-P900 provides on-board pin headers that support an additional five USB 2.0 ports, an LPC connector, SMBus connector, PS/2 support, audio jacks, LVDS, 4 pairs of DIO and two UART ports. The rear I/O includes one HDMI port, one VGA port, 2 USB 2.0 ports and 1 GigaLAN port.
"The VIA Pico-ITX allows embedded system design to pack unprecedented levels of performance into even smaller form factors," said Epan Wu Head of the VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, Inc. "The new VIA EPIA-P900 opens up exciting new possibilities for innovation in ultra compact embedded designs."
VIA did not offer actual pricing or availability, so stay tuned.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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JasonAkkerman Wait, is this X86 (well X64) compatible? VIA has a license to make X86 chips right?Reply
If so this could be very useful to me.
EDIT : It seems it is X86. All the drivers on their website are for Windows 7 and XP. -
FlayerSlayer Compare this guy to ENIAC... rooms filled with equipment, compared to this little 10x7 cm card.Reply -
burnley14 Well that's pretty awesome. Hook up a wireless keyboard/mouse and you have a crazy small HTPC.Reply
Integrated wireless would really seal this as being an amazing product. -
rohitbaran The board is so small that ethernet and USB connectors look like gigangtc buildings in the photo lol!Reply -
waethorn Don't waste your money. The chipsets that VIA is making don't have DX10, let alone 11. The processors are weak compared to even Atom's, and all of their hardware video acceleration features aren't worth a wet fart since you need to have VLC media player with a bunch of bungware codec packs installed in order to take advantage of it. Windows Media Player 11 on Windows 7 only partially supports their hardware acceleration, and even then, almost 75% of the CPU usage is taken up when playing just a 720p video (VLC gets it down to about 30%, which is not even close to ideal). Their stuff is just crap. I bought a few different boards, including one with the same chipset but a higher CPU, and they're just a waste of money. If you want something better, get an AMD embedded board instead - at least you can get something with a modern APU with a DX11 GPU. Even Atom boards will run Aero properly too - VIA's drivers for Aero STILL TO THIS DAY don't work properly without getting graphical glitches.Reply -
dogman_1234 I actually like it. Would like to see Toms do an article on its performance. If it is under 100 USD, I may consider buying many...Reply