green motherboards from VIA

VIA'S LAUNCHES ITS ENERGY-EFFICIENCY GREEN MOTHERBOARDS

New Delhi- December 2, 2007 Chipset and motherboard designer VIA Technologies has announced its latest PC2500 and PC3500 motherboards. These are very energy-efficient and VIA makes the world's smallest and most energy-efficient X86 platforms for personal computers .

VIA makes X86 processing chips, which are focussed on energy-efficiency rather than chasing higher clock rates and/or all-out performance. Because of this it has also focussed on small size and, as well as making desktop PC mainboards, it has ones for laptops, Nano-ITX board for mini-laptops, Pico-ITX for hand-held PDA/PC form-factor devices and a new Mobile-ITX board for mobile phones combining hand-held PC and phone functionality.

VIA's green credentials come from this and also from it purchasing carbon offsets to try and remove carbon from the atmosphere equivalent to that released from power plants providing the electricity its products need. VIA only deals in offsets certified by The Gold Standard, a scheme endorsed by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and over 45 other non-governmental organisations. VIA says its CD-7 is the first carbon-free processor because of this. Its low power draw products means that solar power is become practicable as an energy supply source for them.

The pc3500 mainboard offers the lowest power consumption for Windows Vista PCs; a complete VIA pc3500-based PC draws 50 percent less than the Energy Star 4.0 requirements specify. According to VIA's corporate marketing VP, Richard Brown, Intel's Low Power CPU for Vista draws around 60 watts. A complete PC using this would draw around 100 watts. A PC built around VIA's pc3500 would draw about 60 watts, 40 percent less.

The Energy Star 4.0 requirement is for a PC in idle mode to draw less than 50 watts. Such a VIA-based PC would draw about 23 watts. Even when very busy with, for example, DVD playback, it would only draw around 34 watts. Running a Vista performance test it would draw about 50 watts. In comparison a Pentium 4-type mid-range PC would draw around 250 watts; five times more.

Brown thinks that thin client use will expand: "Globally every one will have to digitise. The standard PC model is not well-suited for this, having size, power-draw and waste issues." Several OEMs, such as HP, use VIA products in their thin client products.

The new Pc-1 motherboards have already been launched and are available in the UK market.They have already got wide industry support

website: http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/c7-d/partner_products.jsp