This new VIA CPU seems really amazing, but we have to wait and see for its performance. Honestly, VIA doesn’t have a good track on this field. Just remember VIA C3 processor, that running at 750 MHz was slower than a Celeron running at 566 MHz. It is true that C3 power consumption was far lower than Celeron’s, but for desktop market, who cares?

On the other hand, for the mobile market power consumption is the ultimate goal, and the Holy Graal is to have a notebook with good performance with a battery lasting at least eight hours. Will VIA C7-M help industry go in this direction?

Data published by VIA seems interesting, but the only performance comparison provided was the tricky performance/watt ratio, which seems great but since VIA said that C7-M has a power consumption 40% lower than Pentium M, even with a 39% performance difference in favor to Pentium M, VIA C7-M would show a better performance/watt ratio than Pentium M’s.

On the other hand, the embedded security co-processor is a great idea, and we wonder why other companies haven’t think of this before. Another great idea from VIA was to use two clock generators, which provides a faster way to switch between two clock speeds in order to save battery life.

• For more information: http://www.via.com.tw