VIA Eve mobile gaming console

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swaaye

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A friend of mine at E3 took the best photo of the device that I've seen yet. It's running Half Life in this photo.

I believe the mobo to the left is the device's. Awesome little device, if a little strange looking. Too bad VIA's cpus are so awful :) ...but I'd imagine that the fact that they are nearly the lowest power x86 CPUs in existence is a major plus in this case.

533MHz Eden-N Processor on a 133MHz front-side bus
128MB DDR266 SDRAM
20GB hard drive
VIA CN400 chipset
S3 UniChrome Pro graphics with 200MHz core clock
VIA Vinyl six-channel audio with EAX support
4" 640x480 LCD display
two USB 2.0 ports
802.11b Wi-Fi

 
That's very cool, aesthetically terrible, but very cool nonetheless.

Portable UT Original fragmatches, anyone? :)
 
Yeah, it's like the x86 PDA I've always dreamed of....but with very capable 3D and audio! OMG!

According to the press material the price will be less than a Creative Zen jukebox. At least that's according to their marketing graph of Price vs Functionality. It will be more expensive than a Sony PSP but with obviouly more functionality.

It's not going to be cheap but it sure is a nifty device.

More In Depth Specs:
Overall System:
533 MHz Eden-N based on Nehemiah (fanless)
133MHz FSB
SSE & MMX
256MB PC2100 DDR
20GB HDD
2xUSB2.0 ports

Graphics:
VIA CN400 Digital Media Chipset
S3 Unichrome Pro Integrated Core
200MHz engine clock
128bit 3d engine
Chromotion CE Video Display Engine
-MPEG2/4 HW Accel
-Adaptive Deinterlace
-Video Deblocking
Pixel Fill @ 200MP/s, 2 textures each
Triangle rate of 4.5MT/s
DX 7/8/9 compatible
DXTC&S3TC
OpenGL Support
Z-bias, LOD-bias, Polygon offset, Edge AA, Alpha blending
Specular Lighting

Audio:
VIA Vinyl 6-channel (what the hell? weird!)
EAX1,2
DS3D
I3DL2
A3D 1.0

LCD:
4" 640x480 TFT - ideal for all PC games apparently

HDD:
HDD is 1.8". Games transferred to it by wireless LAN or USB2.0 passthru

Batteries:
Prismatic Lithium-Ion batteries. Two packs included for hot-swapping.

Port List:
Power Jack
2x USB2.0
1x CompactFlash type 2 slot
2x battery slots
1x smartcard slot
2x 1/8" stereo jacks headphone&microphone in
1x 1/8" stereo jack for composite video out (!)

Button List:
D-pad (WASD)
L/R triggers
Cluster of 4 action buttons
Line of 6 aux function buttons


(these specs are for the initial design and can change)[/u]
 
Very cute, but price will make it or break it (that it is a fully featured HD based video player helps a bit). Well that and the design, AFAICS breaking it wont be too hard if you throw it into your bag in it's present shape.
 
I think it's wonderful VIA has demonstrated this new machine. We need more competition in this area. The shape isn't too portable though. Oh and yeah price will be a huge factor if it wants to sell decent numbers.
 
swaaye said:
A friend of mine at E3 took the best photo of the device that I've seen yet. It's running Half Life in this photo.

I believe the mobo to the left is the device's. Awesome little device, if a little strange looking. Too bad VIA's cpus are so awful :) ...but I'd imagine that the fact that they are nearly the lowest power x86 CPUs in existence is a major plus in this case.

533MHz Eden-N Processor on a 133MHz front-side bus
128MB DDR266 SDRAM
20GB hard drive
VIA CN400 chipset
S3 UniChrome Pro graphics with 200MHz core clock
VIA Vinyl six-channel audio with EAX support
4" 640x480 LCD display
two USB 2.0 ports
802.11b Wi-Fi

Click to expand...

The lowest power using x86 cpus are still too high for a good handheld.
Anyhow, a VIA 533mhz cpu would offer performance probably somewhere around a 100 mhz celeron, which would probably have similar power consumption if made today.
This thing will not compete with PSP in graphics or cpu power, but it will possibly compete with the DS(the ds's cpu has to do graphics and cpu stuff), except at 4x the cost.

BTW, won't this thing present some legality problems since it doesn't play games of the cds? And it certainly won't play anything recent, I'm guessing its graphics chip has t and l so it can play recent stuff, but the cpu probably can't handle anything more than starcraft and halflife.

Still pretty neat I suppose...it'll probably find more use for emulation of psx, n64, arcade, gba, etc games than it will for pc games. How big is the harddrive size?

Lets see, pc games I can readily see right now that could run on it that I'd want to play..
The (Even More) Incredible Machine! Yeah!
Master of Orion 2.
Quake
Fianl Fantasy 7
Jedi Knight
Halflife series
Tie Fighter
Fallout 1 and 2

Yeah, and even those are stretches...an the first one is a joke of course. Still, maybe it can play perfect dark while the DS maybe unable too, and wouldn't get it. Or how about conker's bad fur day, eh? The ai in that is fairly entertaining, better than halflife offline with bots.(includes all mods) Plus it'd fit the controls better.
 
How are you arrive at those conclusions about performance being relative to a 100 MHz celeron, Fox5?

The centar team that Via employs is actually rather talented and their CPUs thus far have been very good considering the level of funding.

In anycase, could be very good.
 
Saem said:
How are you arrive at those conclusions about performance being relative to a 100 MHz celeron, Fox5?

The centar team that Via employs is actually rather talented and their CPUs thus far have been very good considering the level of funding.

In anycase, could be very good.
Click to expand...

Because a 1ghz via cpu performs about on the level of a 300mhz celeron, and a 2ghz via cpu(if one exists) performs on about the level of a 600 mhz duron...or at least on the architectures I saw compared, I do believe they had a better one at that time where a 1.5ghz(or was it a 1ghz?) was on par with a 600mhz duron, but I doubt they have their best cpu line in this thing as it would drain too much power probably.
Anyhow, don't see 533mhz cpu and assume it's at all comparable to a 533mhz pentium 3 or athlon.
 
The better one you refer to is called Nehemiah. The fastest one they have out right now is either 1.1 or 1.2 GHz. (I know they have a step up above the 1GHz Nehemiah, but I'm not sure which one it is.) This core will compare at 1GHz to a P3/Celeron or Duron around 700MHz or so, IIRC.

However, from the specs it has the Nehemiah core within it, therefore their best CPU line is indeed used. In fact, it uses less power than the previous Ezra cores did.

As a result, assuming it scales linearly (I doubt this is something we should do, but I'm just trying to get a ballpark number here), we can say it's roughly a ~350MHz P3/Celeron or Duron.
 
Well, the 600mhz duron I compared it to wasn't a straight out duron...it was actually a barton, but it gets picked up as a duron when at that speed. So that would be more like a 600mhz athlon of the day anyhow, but with a faster l2 cache. Ok, it's a bit better chip then, it could easily run halflife at 640x480 software res at around 20-30fps probably.(dropping in the intensive scenes, like that one early one when the core is blowing up)
 
Here is something that would benefit from a PowerVR chipset. TBDR = great for shitty CPU's. And I know PowerVR has low power chipsets (they've been developing mobile/PDA chipsets).
 
Nick Spolec said:
Here is something that would benefit from a PowerVR chipset. TBDR = great for shitty CPU's. And I know PowerVR has low power chipsets (they've been developing mobile/PDA chipsets).
Click to expand...

I think via is intent on using as much of their own technology as possible.
Plus, I thought t&l was good for shitty cpus, and tbdr was bad because the cpu has to do all the sorting.
 
Does the Unichrome have T&L? I think it's just the same souped-up Savage4 they've been rehashing since 1999. At least it's low power.
 
Fox5 said:
I think via is intent on using as much of their own technology as possible. Plus, I thought t&l was good for shitty cpus, and tbdr was bad because the cpu has to do all the sorting.
Click to expand...

Well, all recent PowerVR tech chipsets have had hardware T&L.. But, maybe I should have elaborated a little more on what I was trying to say.

With a low performing CPU/Memory subsystem (such as the VIA little console there), a TBDR will basically pull the entire graphics load. It is able to do this because of it's extremely effecient bandwidth and fillrate. The Unicrome, which is basically another notch on the Savage onboard solution, relys on the CPU WAAAY to much, and in this regard (with the VIA CPU at 533mhz), will not do any good. It's Fillrate is only 200 MP/s.

I understand VIA wants to use their S3 brand, but I think the Unicrome really is going to hamper this thing. This system will be starved. VIA would be smart to use a PowerVR chipset, because PowerVR chips have always been low cost/low power/low transistor (and this is not taking into account their recent mobile/PDA chipsets), and have also been (relatively) good performers.
 
PC-Engine said:
There's no recent PowerVR chip unless you're talking about the mobile versions like MBX.
Click to expand...

Well, even the kyro is newer than what this mobile thing is based on, and it performs better.(this savage thing sounds to be about neon250 performance)
 
Nick Spolec said:
PC-Engine said:
There's no recent PowerVR chip unless you're talking about the mobile versions like MBX.
Click to expand...

Sure there are. They just haven't made it to market.
Click to expand...

And who says they'll make it to market? AFAIK only SEGA has licensed Series 5 which has hardware TnL and I doubt they'll be making a PC card or portable game machine with it. Regardless VIA wants to use their own tech.


"Well, all recent PowerVR tech chipsets have had hardware T&L.."
Click to expand...

Which ones?
 
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