Where's my C7 laptop already?

S

SpasticTeapot

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 21, 2004
Messages
188
Via's C7 processor line is, at first glanc, not exactly awe-inspring. Performance is equivalent to a similarly-clocked Dothan, and with CPU speeds currently topping out at 1.7ghz (as far as I know), the Core Two appears to paste it.

Until, of course, you notice two key features:
1. The low power draw
2. The even lower price point of most of VIA's products.


A C7-based laptop would be a marvellous thing. According to factory specs from Micron and Via, a C7 laptop would draw under five watts (withoud HDD and LCD) of power with 1GB of DDR2, making it perfect for inexpensive ultraportable laptops. A simple chipset means that motherboards could be made small without squashing a full-sized chipset into a very small space; the rat's nest that is a small laptop's motherboard would be made much neater, and the production cost would decrease. Reliability would also increase - less parts mean less things to go wrong.

As I type this on my X40, I wish that Via would hurry the zark up. My Thinkpad is sweet, but I doubt that most people would be willing to go through the hassle associated with buying a refurbished laptop, instead wanting to buy new. If a manufacturer could drop the price on an ultraportable by using inexpensive C7 processors and simple Via chipsets to below the 700$ mark while maintaining a high degree of quality and reliability, I would have bought one myself.
 
I would comment on it but I haven't seen any comparison between dothan and C7, if it is as powerful as you say it is, spare one for me please. ;)
 
There are a few laptops listed on VIA's website, but it seems that they aren't available in North America. Unfortunately the market in the US, unlike that of Japan for example, seems to be for faster processors and bigger screens, not portability and battery life, so maybe that is why they aren't marketing any laptops with the C7-M processor here. I don't know where you could get one in the US, though there is the possibility of there being laptops other than those listed on VIA's website being sold within the US.
 
None of them, however, seem to be featuring the ULV processors.

After having large numbers of students and teachers coo at my X40 for its long battery life and light weight, I'd think that, if marketed properly, a C7-based laptop would do very well. If a company like HP, which has a history of using processors from multiple vendors, were to produce an X40-like laptop with VIA's low-power processors and simple chpsets, they could have equally high reliability at a much lower price.

The trick is selling it to students. Most students don't care what CPU they have, so long as they can rip CD's and play solitare. They want to take notes, and look cool. Build a stylish, durable, and inexpensive laptop that also has double the battery life and half the weight of the competition, and you're set.

I would also think that this might appeal to buisness markets. Small, light notebooks are generally either hideously expensive (Lenovo) or unreliable (Averatec). By using VIA's chipsets, the parts count could be dropped by half or more. Less parts mean less things to go wrong, and greater overall longevity.
 
jonathonball said:
didn't they sell a 1ghz VIA powered laptop at Walmart last year for like $399?
Click to expand...

Yes, but it was based around the slower and less power-efficient C3, if I recall. The C7 is in an entirely different category.
 
I think the average notebooks today have way too much power for general mobile use - word processing, surfing, basic productivity software, presentations, multimedia etc... Dual-Core isn't put to best use either since almost all notebooks have 5400rpm hdds and if you try to launch/run multiple programs at once, the hdd slows the process down considerably. I have a dual-core destop with a 7200rpm NCQ hdd and I notice slowdowns if I try to use two programs that both need to access the HDD, like extracting a rar file using winrar and opening a 100 MB pdf file at the same time. On the other hand if you are a "creative professional" or use your notebook as your gaming rig, dual-core power on the go must be a blessing. It's just not what I necessarily expect from a notebook.

Disregard the above rant for a sec, basically what I want to say is that there are people who would only use a notebook for the most basic tasks and the price is a much more significant concern over the performance. As the OP stated, VIA C7 might come quite handy in providing such a platform. The only problem would be that such a notebook, if priced too competitively, could interfere with sales of other budget notebooks around $500-700 range and this wouldn't please the manufacturer one bit imho.
 
I think VIA has the total package but somehow they never manage to sell their products as well as other companies. First of all they own S3 which produces graphics units that provide adequate 3D performance with very little power consumption (S27/S29) so they have the know-how on how to develop a decent mobile graphics unit, they seem to have a proper mobile processor in C7 and finally they have been developing mobile chipsets since eternity... Yet they can not produce a brand platform like Intel did with the centrino and convince bigger manufacturers to produce notebooks using their platform. I have been a fan of VIA since KT266 era and I feel sad for them lately as they seem to have shrunk to a budget chipset company, not the innovative manufacturer it was back then, I hope things will change for the better.
 
spydermonkey said:
Here's the laptop reported in the Tom's Hardware report. I'm a little cautious about the brand, but you go with what you can find, I guess.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5192512
Click to expand...

That just doesn't seem that good to me. I would rather drop the extra 100 bucks on like a dell b130 with more ram and a pentium m or 200 and get a coreduo.

The big market I would think for the C7 would be real small notebooks. I'm thinking one of them in a wide screen 12 inch notebook with good battery life would be where it is at. With the 15 inch systems(hell the 14 inch ones as well) you would be better off with a pentium m/duo system or maybe the amd based ones.
 
swatbat said:
That just doesn't seem that good to me. I would rather drop the extra 100 bucks on like a dell b130 with more ram and a pentium m or 200 and get a coreduo.

The big market I would think for the C7 would be real small notebooks. I'm thinking one of them in a wide screen 12 inch notebook with good battery life would be where it is at. With the 15 inch systems(hell the 14 inch ones as well) you would be better off with a pentium m/duo system or maybe the amd based ones.
Click to expand...

I don't know about that. Add shipping, and it's maybe more like 150$. And the battery life is not as good. Besides, a 2ghz C7 is pretty similar to a 1.8ghz Pentium M in performance, if not better.

This is also a first-release laptop - the price will likely go down, not up, and this is actually just a Celeron-M laptop with the pin-compatible C7 installed anyway. You're correct, though: as I've been saying, <12" laptops using the super-simple Via chipsets would be both cheap and reliable.
 
SpasticTeapot said:
I don't know about that. Add shipping, and it's maybe more like 150$. And the battery life is not as good. Besides, a 2ghz C7 is pretty similar to a 1.8ghz Pentium M in performance, if not better.

This is also a first-release laptop - the price will likely go down, not up, and this is actually just a Celeron-M laptop with the pin-compatible C7 installed anyway. You're correct, though: as I've been saying, <12" laptops using the super-simple Via chipsets would be both cheap and reliable.
Click to expand...

We were ordering b130/1300s for just under 600 shipped with 1.7/1.8 pentium m(depending on when ordered), 1 gig of ram, 60 gig hd, dvdrw, wireless.

For 700 shipped a 6400/e1505 with 1.66 coreduo, 1 gig of ram, 60 gig hd, dvdrw, wireless etc.

Even though I'm not a huge fan of the b130 I would rather order one of them with an intel chip in it over a via. I'd also love to see some realworld benchmarks showing that the c7 can compete with a pentium m. Amd and hell intels desktop chips had trouble keeping up with it per mhz. I just don't see a 2ghz keeping up with a 1.8 pentium m. Maybe like a 1.4 or something(I'd prob buy that). Maybe I just keep thinking back to all the old chips and the fantastic preformance on them. I'd love to be proven wrong on that though.

Still want to see a nice 12 inch widescreen or a 10 inch with one of these in it.
 
spydermonkey said:
Here's the laptop reported in the Tom's Hardware report. I'm a little cautious about the brand, but you go with what you can find, I guess.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5192512
Click to expand...
Bleh. It ships with a tiny 3 cell battery rated for "1.5+ hours." http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/26/everex-teams-with-via-for-nc1500-the-worlds-most-energy-effic/

The bar on $500 laptops has really been raised this year. The laptop in my sig is occasionally on sale at Fry's (B&M and online) for $500 or less. It comes configured much nicer than that Everex NC1500: 2GHz Mobile Sempron 3300+ (S754, 25W) vs 1.5GHz C7 (12W), BrightView glossy LCD, 80GB vs 60GB hard drive, X200M video (Aero supported) vs Unichrome, gets over an hour longer battery life (6 cell vs 3 cell) and the V5201 weighs only 0.5 lbs more. The real travel weight difference might be zero since Compaq's AC adapter is so tiny. And keep this review in mind when looking at the C7M performance below. The Sempron 3300+ holds up pretty well against the Pentium M 1.8GHz.

Here's a performance review (in Chinese ^__^) of the C7M 1.5GHz vs Pentium-M 1.5GHz vs Celeron-M 1.5GHz, all configured closely (400MHz FSB, VIA PN800 chipset, 512MB 533MHz memory, same hard drive, same OS and same drivers): http://www.beareyes.com.cn/2/lib/200601/18/20060118181_5.htm

Notice that the only result it excels in is MobileMark 2005, which obviously wasn't run with a 3 cell battery. ;) Summary:

The C7M's Sandra (Dhrystone) ALU performance is 60% lower than the same clock speed Pentium M or Celeron M
The C7M's Sandra (Whetstone) FPU performance is 74% slower than the P-M or C-M
The C7M's Sandra (Whetstone) SSE2 performance is 53% slower than the C-M and 66% slower than the P-M
and it doesn't get any better in the rest of the CPU benchmarks. Memory bandwidth is also pathetic, in the range of SDR SDRAM scores.

The lack of performance might be excusable for a laptop like the NC1500 if it came with a larger battery. The 15.4" screen form factor prevents the laptop from being smaller, but the tiny battery is inexcusable. The NC1500 would be a completely different beast with better power management, a smaller form factor (12" or 13" LCD) and 5+ hours using a 4-6 cell battery... at a $500 price point.
 
spydermonkey said:
Here's the laptop reported in the Tom's Hardware report. I'm a little cautious about the brand, but you go with what you can find, I guess.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5192512
Click to expand...

Interestingly enough, according to Wal-Mart from that link, they are getting a special version of that chip that comes with 256 MB of cache.

I don't think the market for ultraportables is that big in the US. When I was in college I certainly didn't see many people (well, any people) using a teeny tiny machine, about the smallest was around a 14.1" screen. Also, I wouldn't see a 10" laptop as anything more useful than a toy to play around with, taking notes or web browsing on a screen that small would just be painful, and there is no way it could be a general purpose machine. A 15.4" widescreen notebook is about as low as I would go and still consider it to be acceptable for use, and considering the proliferation of 15.4" and 17" units on the market, it seems most people agree.
 
NulloModo said:
Interestingly enough, according to Wal-Mart from that link, they are getting a special version of that chip that comes with 256 MB of cache.

I don't think the market for ultraportables is that big in the US. When I was in college I certainly didn't see many people (well, any people) using a teeny tiny machine, about the smallest was around a 14.1" screen. Also, I wouldn't see a 10" laptop as anything more useful than a toy to play around with, taking notes or web browsing on a screen that small would just be painful, and there is no way it could be a general purpose machine. A 15.4" widescreen notebook is about as low as I would go and still consider it to be acceptable for use, and considering the proliferation of 15.4" and 17" units on the market, it seems most people agree.
Click to expand...

Most of the notebooks around my campus are cheaper notebooks. Low end dells, hps, etc. I see them then I see a buch of people with apple notebooks or high end gamming systems. I'll tell you though the number of 12 inch ibooks and 13 inch macbooks is really high though. I've also seen a lot of smaller notebooks. I think a well priced 12 inch would do well. Issue is that you can get a good 15 inch notebook for about half what a good 12 inch would cost.
 
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