Posted on Thursday, December 30 2010 @ 0:20 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
VIA announced a deal with Simmtronics to distribute old VIA PC-1 platforms in developing countries. The firms hope the deal will enable people with low incomes to get their own PCs.
Under the terms of the agreement, Simmtronics will assemble a full range of low-power, highly-integrated Via pc-1 motherboards in its advanced manufacturing facility in Roorkee, Uttaranchal, India, and distribute the products through its channel partners in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Dubai, the UAE, Turkey, Iraq, Algeria and Ghana. Via Technologies hopes that appointment of an exclusive designer and distributor of its platform for emerging markets will help it to increase its presence and boost market share.
Unfortunately, Via pc-1 platforms rely on extremely outdated microprocessors, including Via C7-D and Via C3 launched in 2001 and 2005, respectively, that do not offer contemporary levels of performance; as well as rather old core-logic sets with functionality that do not sport modern features (the chipsets only support DirectX 9-class graphics core, whereas the low-cost solutions from AMD now support DirectX 11-class graphics processing) and some of which only support first-generation DDR memory that is no longer mass produced.
Source: X-bit Labs
