COMPUTEX THIS YEAR has been all about the mini-processors, with Intel's Atom stealing most of the spotlight. But there have been plenty of other tiny bits of central processing silicon on display, possibly the most notable being Via's latest low-power play, the Nano (formerly codenamed Isiah. Why? Because 'is one eye's 'igher than the other. Obviously).
Atom is designed for small internet-centric devices, but Via may well have bigger fish to fry. The company demonstrated Nano, clocked at 1.8GHz, running Crysis alongisde an 8600 GT - and with the game going at a fair old whack under Vista, no less.
Whilst Intel is busy trying to grow into low-power markets, is Via getting ready to transition into desktop again?
The footage of Crysis can be found for your delectation on, of course, YouTube. µ
Tags: Intel
Who really cares that it runs Crysis?

This like taking a smartcar which is economical and town sized, and then strapping a JATO unit to it and saying "look it can do 200mph".

This is as irrelavant as it is absurd - everyone knows they should have used an ATI card to at least make it plausible from a power consumption perspective... LOL.
Atom is a bit of a dud, but this is impressive for such a low clock/powered x86 processor!
While everyone is focused on how this Via will stack up against Atom... why has noone asked how it will stack up against a cheap AMD dual core? AMD appears to be targeting the low end desktop which is right where this could end up?

I don't think people understand the purpose of the Atom - the first gen is really MID application with some spillover into the ultra low end desktop/notebook. I see the 2nd gen being the serious product for the lowend CPU market.

Let's have some perpsective here the 1.8GHz nano is rated at 25Watts, th atom it is being compared to is ~1/10 the TDP

Just a thought...(probably not a very good one)