Review: VIA Pico-ITX - not quite the perfect form-factor

The upshot? What we think

They Have A Fight, Triangle Wins

So. What exactly is the problem? The absolute root cause of the problem is VIA's C7 processor. Although VIA's press release and website target Pico-ITX at "the ultra compact embedded system platforms" it has also tried to court the imagination of the DIY PC enthusiast too. For that target market, at least, i would say that the C7 is garbage - it's antique and seemingly of little practical use to the enthusiast for even the elementary task of web browsing through todays interweb.

How slow is it, you say? Well, first, let's look at the "1.0 GHz" part. Are all GHz equal? No, they're not. Compare a simple single-threaded MP3 encode between an Athlon64 running at 1.0 GHz, and the PX10000G:

Yeah, my Athlon64 is running a higher power drain than the PX10000G is - but that's not necessarily the case. The CPU runs at about 9W, whereas for 10W, you can get a Core 2 Duo U7500: a 64-bit, 1.06GHz part with 2 cores, easily delivering 5-10x the performance for a nominal increase in power consumption. For the enthusiast, I simply cannot recommend the PX10000G - nor ANY C7-powered board - for any purpose.

Which leaves the other user base - embedded developers. VIA makes no secret of its embedded platform credentials, and even the BIOS splash screen talks about it. However, I fail to see why embedded developers would want an EPIA. x86 processors are an expensive, power-hungry design for embedded use - any embedded systems in your home will be using ARM, SH4, MIPS, or PowerPC. Windows CE runs on three of those. Linux or BSD run on any of them. Even other embedded operating systems like VxWorks run on these low-power embedded platforms. And the embedded users will look at the board, scratch their heads, and mumble "wait, where's the GPIO?".

So what's the use of x86? For running x86-only code, evidently. If you're developing your own application for in-house use, you have your own source code, so the host CPU doesn't matter. If you have third-party programs you want to embed which only run on x86 - THEN, and only then, does EPIA serve a purpose. Which generally means Windows XP Embedded, or Windows Embedded for Point of Service. Or maybe even people who got stuck in the late eighties and never escaped, such as those embedding OS/2 or DOS. So there's the target market for the PX10000G: people who are creating Windows XP Embedded devices smaller than a 2.5" hard disk.

And frankly, anyone who meets that description needs a slap and a reality check.

HEXUS Where2Buy

The VIA Pico-ITX board is currently available to buy for around £160 here

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If VIA chooses to respond, we'll publish its commentary here verbatim.

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You probably need some sort of frame-buffer driver for the console output to work correctly. Most VIA Epia boards (all?) need at least the console frame-buffer driver in the kernel to get any output when you're not in X.

I feel VIA missed a lot of opportunities – they always pretend to have good support for open-source software, but my own experiences point out that for instance Linux support for those Epia boards is half-assed at best… The basics work, but don't expect any extras, such as hardware acceleration.

Not having (good enough) support for open-source operating systems is shooting yourself in the foot with this sort of product.

And if one wants to make an own router app, as you mention – there are better platforms for building console-only embedded-style systems.

As I own a EPIA PD10000 (Mini-ITX with VIA C3 1Ghz “Nehemiah” with dual NIC connections) and use Linux on a full time basis, I'd have to agree with the article.

VIA's support for Linux is CRAP. I don't just mean providing barely adequate drivers, I mean not working with the community to produce drivers at all. We have to reverse engineer and develop our own from scratch! While both AMD and Intel are providing documentation specs, starting community driver projects, and even contributing direct code back, VIA is taking the Nvidia approach of just providing drivers.

The biggest difference here, is that Nvidia actually does a decent job with their drivers, while VIA doesn't seem to give a damn. (Its been a couple of years now, and they have made little attempt to improve). The community developed driver does a better job…Even then, that's barely adequate for the task. (As you have experienced in the article).

As I result, I usually assign VIA-based solutions to “background” applications like firewalls, low power file/print servers, home built robots, etc. Stuff that doesn't need much CPU grunt to run or doesn't require VIA IGP's features. Mostly “set and forget” (in a physical sense), while remotely admin'ing them.

The only worthwhile solution coming from VIA is their upcoming Isaiah processor. Said to be 2 to 4 times the performance of the current C7, while producing the same thermal footprint. I estimate that it'll be approx clock for clock equal to PIII, but still slower than Pentium-M, A64, Sempron, Celeron (Core-based), etc, etc.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with VIA's IGPs. They're a waste of time.

You're better off waiting for Intel's Silverthorne or even Diamondville. At least these will come available with i945 chipset as an option (the other is SiS)…Which actually work well under Linux!…Besides, Diamondville will come in dual-core! :D
=> DailyTech - Intel Reveals 4 Watt “Diamondville” Processor Details

So I reckon it'll be like this in the future…VIA vs Intel. (embedded/budget market)
=> C3/C7 vs Diamondville/Silverthorne
=> Isaiah vs (low end) Celeron?

Regardless, the budget and embedded markets is about to explode with lots of different options to choose from! :mexican:

Oh Jo!

This is so incredibly underpowered, and enless x.org mit unichrome has changed a lot since i ran it on my mini-itx, you just cant play video without dropping the res. If you drop it right down to 480p type resolutions, and are running nothing else you might have some joy.

Given the cost of say 8gig of flash, i think that you might find this can actually run XP Pro quite resonably, mini-itx.com - epia px 10000 review. This is making me think that one of these could make a nice extender for the kitchen. Whats really anoying here is that you have to buy even more software to get it to do this. More money wasted!

It really should be noted that the hardware is capable of doing (all be it) limited playback OK. But that a combination of bad drivers and the sluggish nature of the certain choice of OS for review's premier windowing system might not of helped things.

An intresting test is the performance of domain socket callbacks which i belive are still used heavily by Xorg has generally been awful on the via platforms i'ev owned before.

TheAnimus
Oh Jo!

This is so incredibly underpowered, and enless x.org mit unichrome has changed a lot since i ran it on my mini-itx, you just cant play video without dropping the res. If you drop it right down to 480p type resolutions, and are running nothing else you might have some joy.

Given the cost of say 8gig of flash, i think that you might find this can actually run XP Pro quite resonably, mini-itx.com - epia px 10000 review. This is making me think that one of these could make a nice extender for the kitchen. Whats really anoying here is that you have to buy even more software to get it to do this. More money wasted!

It really should be noted that the hardware is capable of doing (all be it) limited playback OK. But that a combination of bad drivers and the sluggish nature of the certain choice of OS for review's premier windowing system might not of helped things.

An intresting test is the performance of domain socket callbacks which i belive are still used heavily by Xorg has generally been awful on the via platforms i'ev owned before.

i'm not sure i'd even want to give it kitchenputer status - 60 quid gets you a proper intel-based mini-itx board with cpu. hell, for barely more than the price of this thing, you could buy an eeepc (with ram, storage, screen, and faster processor)

i don't think even windows with via's proprietary drivers can hide the ugly truth: c7 sucks

duodecim
You probably need some sort of frame-buffer driver for the console output to work correctly. Most VIA Epia boards (all?) need at least the console frame-buffer driver in the kernel to get any output when you're not in X.

yeah, but it's fine via vga. and outside the linux question, you can't even use the BIOS via dvi. which seems dumb to me