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Hardware VIA Announces EPIA EK Series
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - August 10, 2006 1:50 PM
Print 14 comment(s) - last by mindless1.. on Aug 11 at 7:51 PM
Powered by VIA's Luke CoreFusion

VIA has announced its latest addition to its EPIA line of motherboards. The latest VIA EPIA EK series is powered by VIA’s Luke CoreFusion processor. VIA’s Luke CoreFusion processor has an integrated north bridge for an all-in-one solution. The integrated north bridge is similar to VIA’s CN700 north bridge, though with a couple more features. The VIA Luke CoreFusion is paired with VIA’s VT7237R south bridge. Features of the VIA EPIA EK include UniChrome IGP Pro graphics, Vinyl audio and VIA’s PadLock security engine.

With the UniChrome IGP Pro graphics the EPIA EK has hardware acceleration capabilities for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats. Audio is provided by VIA’s Vinyl VT1618 for six channel audio.

Other features include dual Ethernet ports, Serial ATA, PATA and one PCI slot. VIA also offers Gigabit Ethernet as an option on the EPIA EK. Up to four serial/COM ports and eight USB ports are supported as well. An onboard digital video header is also available for VIA’s optional LVDS/DVI module. Due to its small size the EPIA EK only has one memory slot for a maximum of 1GB of DDR400 memory.

Two variants of the EPIA EK series will be available -- the 1 GHz EPIA EK10000G and the 800 MHz EPIA EK8000E. Availability is expected later this month.

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HD Support soon?
By RMTimeKill on 8/10/2006 2:05:32 PM , Rating: 3
If they could increase the power of the IGP and the Audio to do HD and Surround sound, this would be the ultimate little HTPC boards, and could fit in a case that looked like a dvd player! (and even BE the dvd player!!)




RE: HD Support soon?
By dmce on 8/10/2006 2:13:21 PM , Rating: 2
Its not really going to cope with HD Video though is it


RE: HD Support soon?
By exdeath on 8/10/2006 2:45:16 PM , Rating: 2
Shuttle X100?

Core Duo 2 Ghz + 2GB RAM + Radeon 1600 (MXM2 slot so maybe a 7900GTX GO?) + 3.5" HDD

Has DVI and optical outputs. Why do you need audio power for a HTPC? All you need is a 5.1 optical pass through to go to the AV processor...


RE: HD Support soon?
By exdeath on 8/10/2006 3:00:56 PM , Rating: 2
Oops its a Radeon M1400 not 1600


RE: HD Support soon?
By cubby1223 on 8/10/2006 3:00:01 PM , Rating: 2
The new epia boards are out, and with the current fastest 1.5ghz cpu, hd resolution movies play like a slideshow. I've got an EPIA-M board right now that's a great htpc for regular movies, wmp, divx, realplayer, etc. But the reviews for these new ones are just not good at all. Sure they beat the old EPIA boards, but nowhere near good enough to be a new hd htpc system.


RE: HD Support soon?
By masher2 (blog) on 8/10/2006 4:11:51 PM , Rating: 2
Did those reviews use the hardware acceleration on the EK boards?


RE: HD Support soon?
By cubby1223 on 8/10/2006 9:07:43 PM , Rating: 2
http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/forums/viewthrea...

As much hardware acceleration was turned on that was available. It's possible that VIA hasn't created the proper drivers yet, or maybe the hardware acceleration only supports certain few compression schemes.


RE: HD Support soon?
By masher2 (blog) on 8/11/2006 12:00:36 AM , Rating: 2
Ah, that's a review of the earlier EN board, not the EK. The EN didn't even have Mpeg-4 acceleration...not that it would have mattered, as apparently these benchmarks were done with HD encoded with H.264 and VC-1.


RE: HD Support soon?
By cubby1223 on 8/11/2006 1:00:45 AM , Rating: 2
I'd still be surprised, though. The two lines supposidely have the same integrated graphics technology. Unless VIA released the EN models too soon before the mpeg 4 acceleration was ready, and now it is on the EK models. Though I really am disappointed that these EK models use the older Nehemiah processor technology instead of Ester. I've just waited too long for via to release a decent epia board with component video outputs. I want to replace my EPIA-M, but am not going to do so until there is the decent hardware that will be capable of playing hd-dvd or blu-ray discs at top quality. And I haven't seen any shread of hope that VIA will get the job done.


RE: HD Support soon?
By Anh Huynh on 8/11/2006 1:08:08 AM , Rating: 2
And a RAW MPEG2 Transport Stream.


Luke.......
By Quiksel on 8/10/2006 10:25:17 PM , Rating: 2
VIA: .....Luke..... use the force....

Luke: I would, but I'm too slow and behind the times! I think I'll go hang out with Jabba.




RE: Luke.......
By mforce on 8/11/2006 5:50:32 AM , Rating: 2
This made me laugh , very , very funny . Thanks . Also so true , the C3 was never a good design and now it's getting old too and begging for a redesign .


RE: Luke.......
By mindless1 on 8/11/2006 7:51:42 PM , Rating: 2
The C3 was fine for what it is, but people kept trying to pretend THEIR desires somehow override reality.

Some kid thinks "but I really really want it for a HTPC", then they find out it isn't powerful enough and write that it stinks. It doesn't stink, it is what it is, was never meant to be used for anything compute-intensive. Next the marketing department got involved and painted a misleading picture. Intel's done that too, even in ways as outrageous as suggesting a P4 makes listening to music, better.


By peternelson on 8/11/2006 5:50:33 AM , Rating: 2
In honesty, these are a bit slow and I can't see many people buying them.

However I'm quite interested because of the hardware crypto, and on die hardware random number generators.

Sadly when VIA announce products they don't seem to ship, and I can never find anywhere at all in UK that has recent models.

So unfortunately if they cannot get their channel and distribution act into gear, they will lose many sales, including mine.

Also they MUST label their board and box with the SPECIFIC PROCESSOR ie SPEED that they stuck onto the board. It is not acceptable to need to power up a system to identify which cpu it has!!!!!





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