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I dropped a 7600GT into the Nano board, and I ended up with ~22 FPS in Bioshock.

I didn't do much other testing; I just wanted to let folks know that there's definitely a ceiling in that particular game w/ the Nano, unless a 9400GT performs about the same as a 7600GT.

Thank you for conducting the testing; there aren't many websites that reviewed this particular board. I have a couple of questions for you;
- Lian-Li Mini-PC Q07 is the case I am inclined to purchase, since it uses standard (ATX) components; from what I understand, the USB connectors might not be compatible with the board. Is that correct?
- I am inclined to use a Mini PCIe SSD (32GB for Vista+all drivers); or use a laptop 802.11 card? Do special risers need to be used? I guess the I/O shield fvrom the case would not work right?
- Overall, dhow would you compare the performance of this Nano processor and the board for a Home media service? (compared to a full ATX system)?

Thank yo again

One more thing; how is the onboard Audio (the VIA HD Vinyl Audio chip?)

Jus refreshing the post. I found the VB 8001 for 109.99 on Suprbiiz. Hope it gets to that price again. I think I'm about to pull the trigger on that one.

One thing I don't understand; a Jetway Mini-ITX with Atom 330 (dual core) managed to pull a 4.3 on Vista's CPU Benchmark. It seems the nano can do a 3.0 at best (with discrete graphics, which frees up memeory bandwith).
I understand the Atom is a dual core, and therefore may have a higher score. Howerver, it seems the Nano's computing power is superior; ability to run games with a graphics card, and video encoding is reportedly faster witht the Nano; what gives?

I can answer your USB header question: the Nano board uses mini connectors, so if that case you're looking at uses normal USB block cables, then it won't work.

However, what would you want to do with the Nano board from a Home Media Service standpoint? I can't tell you how it functions, unless I know what you're trying to do.

As for the rest of your questions, I'm afraid I can't tell you. Though, Vista's CPU benchmark probably shouldn't be used to judge the effectiveness of a processor.

I hope this wasn't asked already, any chance of overclocking that CPU?

By Home Media Service, I mean a Video/Audio appliance that could be left on most of the day. I use an ATX platform right now, with a P4 Northwood 3.06GHZ (a processor from 2002) and a Visiontek HD2600PRO AGP version; everything works great. I now have a LG 1080p TV, and I want to step up to better H264 codecs for video.

I use it to play movies, pictures, and music in the family room. I also use it to hold my movie and music collections,as well as a video conference appliance (there's nothing like Skyping from the couch).

I also play a few games, mostly older titles (Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis for DOS (but oh so much fun) and some newer ones (COD4 for instance). My 5 year old daughter will soon use it to play her webkinz and surf the Kid web.

Oh I also stream movies from Netlfix. So see, I pretty much do it all from this old computer.

The advantage of the VIA 8001 is the PCI express; the AGP drivers are Okay, but can be buggy at times compared to the PCI ones. The second cool thing is power usage; the Via could be left on on the network and access a USB drive remotely, and I wouldn't feel too too bad. Finally, the little SSD drives (which are really really quick to boot (a must for a convenient appliance)) are now $80. Much better than my five minute complete boot time into Vista right now.

Here you go; how about the Audio of the Via Vinyl chip by the way (I use a Creative X-Fi Music right now, and I must say that I am pretty satisfied with it).

Ah, gotcha.

Well, I can tell you that I was successful in getting 1080p content to play back only when I was running Vista Home Premium with an nvidia video card installed. I was using a Dolphin movie from the Windows HD website for the test, so I can't guarantee that it was encoded in H.264 or not. You're free to check on your own, though!

The audio is reasonable. I only had it hooked up the headphones. As long as the CPU wasn't overly taxed (for example, with Bioshock, where the audio skipped massively), the audio was fine. I'm not sure how it would sound hooked up to a real stereo system, though.

BoBzeBuilder wrote:

I hope this wasn't asked already, any chance of overclocking that CPU?

it wasn't asked!

I considered it, but I haven't taken the time to find any software that would do it. I definitely didn't see any OC options in the BIOS.