VIA Shows Us Next-Gen Hardware Results, Info

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VIA Shows Us Next-Gen Hardware Results, Info

The S3 Chrome 600 series / VIA VT3456 (VX11) still hasn't been officially announced, but here are some benchmarks of the forthcoming chipset from a VIA Nano quad-core system...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA0Nzk

[curaga]

While good to see their quad core is still coming, having a discrete gpu - chrome 600 - lose at 800x600 against Brazos at 1920x1080 is just terrible. Sadly with the binary though, the chrome with its binary seems competitive to brazos on mesa.

[Raven3x7]

It's running the game on a 1.2 ghz low power CPU. If you want to compare this to anything try zacate and atom based systems not llano or Trinity

[AlbertP]

Fortunately VIA often releases hardware specifications. If there's sufficient interest writing a good open-source driver would be possible.

There are benchmarks showing the VX900, the previous generation of low power chipsets introduced in 2010, can beat Sandy Bridge graphics in certain configurations.

[lepetit]

yes but openchrome does not advance right now
DRM is still not integrated into the kernel

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/openchrome/xf86-video-openchrome/

[curaga]

Link? Googling "via vx900 vs sandy bridge" did not find a single benchmark...

[AlbertP]

That was a Windows benchmark of course. Unfortunately Google can't find that webpage anymore.

Benchmarks of VIA hardware are varying. Some show the hardware as being faster than Intel Atom and other low-end solutions, while some other benchmarks show it as being painfully slow.

[kazetsukai]

Just not impressed

I really, REALLY want to get excited about VIA again. Their chipsets provided unique solutions and challenges when building embedded systems, and despite the Atom being a far more reliable performer, I'm still somewhat drawn to VIA's offerings.

But really, they need to get their driver and open source situation sorted out. I'm hoping a couple heads roll in high management or something that gets them to turn around and realize that they NEED nothing less than stellar Linux support to really take off here. Their (visible) efforts are that we used to expect, hope for 15 years ago. I don't buy the latest NVIDIA GPUs until they have a couple of driver releases supporting them, and guess what? Many NVIDIA GPUs qualify for day-one purchases with that criteria now.

The expectations of the Linux user has changed. The thought of a super-minimal embedded VIA box with a quad core nano makes me want to drool, but you need to hydrate the beast to make it salivate first.

[lepetit]

Yes, via doing good hardware
it's a shame that Linux drivers are not good

[AlbertP]

The hardware documentation of most VIA graphics chips is public. VIA is an open source friendly company even though they don't write the drivers themselves. If VIA hardware were common, I am sure that there would be open source support for their graphics. Writing a VIA open source driver is much easier than, for example, writing an nVidia open source driver as you don't have to reverse-engineer.