Via's upcoming Isaiah chip can run Crysis

Sure, you might've napped through the marketing speak and blearily paged through the tech documentation, but apparently you haven't heard all there is to know about the new Isaiah architecture from Via. The folks at [H] Enthusiast got to see the chip in action, and were most impressed by the 1.8GHz bugger's ability to run Crysis. Apparently the folks at Via are fairly certain their chip can best the upcoming UMPC-friendly Silverthorn chips from Intel, and it seems like Crysis is about as good a benchmark as any. We're sure to hear more about this little rivalry in the coming months, but we like the way things are headed.

[Via Wired]

[Ayman T @ Jan 27th 2008 4:34AM]

Hope this would be cheaper than intels cihps

[John Shillabeer @ Jan 27th 2008 4:41AM]

It may be able to run Crysis, but will it be playable?

[Mike @ Jan 27th 2008 11:02AM]

I heard it ran it at medium-high settings at 1280x960 with a nvidia 7850 and an average framerate of 60.

That's not to shabby.

[annoyed @ Jan 27th 2008 2:06PM]

more importantly: will it blend?

[Hung @ Jan 27th 2008 4:28PM]

That's quite an ironic user name, because that's how you make people feel.

Also: your face.

[Eric Leung @ Jan 27th 2008 10:44PM]

wtf would you blend a chip that can play crysis?

and dont ask if it can play doom either, because if you have crysis you wouldnt bother with doom

[BlissX @ Jan 27th 2008 4:46AM]

Good Lord, imagine the graphic settings you'd have to set it at in order to play.

800x600, your window into a world of jaggies.

That's a Crysis indeed.

[Superprime @ Jan 27th 2008 4:53AM]

You kids and your fancy HD. 800x600 is a decent resolution

[octoberasian @ Jan 27th 2008 6:24AM]

Hell! In my days, 640 x 480 was awesome, and 800 x 600 was to die for. Heck, before then 320 x 200 was great; all those CGA colors just made your eyes beg for glasses. You kids nowadays are spoiled I tell ya'.

Then came 1024 x 768 and so on and the rest was history...

God! I feel old, and I'm only 27! LOL

Now, where's my SNES? I need to relieve some good 'ol 16-bit fun.

Oh, speaking of this new-fangled Via chip, did they benchmark this at the lowest settings possible or at a low resolution like 640 x 480 and maxed the settings? >_>;

[ssuk @ Jan 27th 2008 6:27AM]

1.7Ghz Intel Centrino notebook, 256mb RAM, Internal Intel graphics accelerator... Yeah, it didn't even load.

[Dan @ Jan 28th 2008 1:36AM]

octoberasian:
you're my hero

[Richard @ Jan 27th 2008 4:49AM]

finally a CPU that can make Windows Mobile run halfway fast.

[Jon @ Jan 27th 2008 8:17AM]

Not funny.

[zabador @ Jan 27th 2008 9:37AM]

@Jon
You must have never used windows mobile for any period of time....

[Garst @ Jan 27th 2008 1:07PM]

Windows Mobile doesn't really need a speed boost. UMPCs, they need a speed and graphics boost.

[Jon @ Jan 27th 2008 5:42PM]

I do (check my history).

WinMob runs on ARM, this is a X86 processor. One wonders if YOU actually used WinMob.

[Stez @ Jan 27th 2008 4:55AM]

I wanna see some benchies...

[Wwhat @ Jan 27th 2008 5:09AM]

bye-bye AMD, hello via.

[BananaBoat @ Jan 27th 2008 5:20AM]

But...can it play doom?

And how is Ron P-

/gets dragged away by the 1000 people that promised to do it if RP was ever mentioned again/

[IMHO @ Jan 27th 2008 5:41AM]

Bugger is a vulgar word used in vernacular British English, Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English,

[Ted @ Jan 27th 2008 5:57AM]

Did you get cut off mid-sentence or something?

[ssuk @ Jan 27th 2008 6:28AM]

I guess he buggered that sentence up...

[Reader @ Jan 27th 2008 7:45PM]

probably capitalized his comma, which causes the rest of the comment to go bye bye...

Not that it's really a big deal, since he was telling us bugger is a dirty-word (no shit).

[Alan Zeino @ Jan 27th 2008 5:58AM]

I'm amazed Via has made a chip that can run anything, let alone Crysis.

[Ted @ Jan 27th 2008 5:59AM]

The CPU wouldn't have to be particularly good to 'run' crysis. What they should also tell us is whether they have quadruple overclocked graphics cards of doom paired with it.

[Zeus.:God @ Jan 27th 2008 6:03AM]

Doesn't matter if they did.

You know the phrase "a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link?" Well its the same with computers, and the CPU would bottleneck it- the ultra powerful super-duper video cards would only do so much.

[Hung @ Jan 27th 2008 8:18AM]

Anything under a dual-core would bottleneck that setup in Crysis. Crysis doesn't really care what clock your cores run at, only that you have two or more of them. The GPUs take care of the rendering but, physics and everything else is put on the CPU and is multi-threaded.

[Mike @ Jan 27th 2008 11:04AM]

Hey Hung....

it's a single core cpu, bud. no dual core of this setup yet, but they have said that it can be done and they're working on that now.

[Hung @ Jan 27th 2008 4:31PM]

Yeah, I know it's a single core. I'm saying that it doesn't matter what the capabilities of a processor is, if it isn't multi-cored, it'll hold back the GPU. Even a 5 GHz Pentium 4 does a poorer job than a 1.83 GHz E6300 when it comes to Crysis.

[Zeus.:God @ Jan 27th 2008 4:56PM]

Dude, dual cores can bottle neck a system. ANY processors can bottle neck a system. Don't talk if you're this ignorant, ok? An E4200 will bottle neck an 8800 GTX or Ultra, and even more so in an SLI setup. It depends on the architecture of the core, the speed, its caches, and so on.

Do some research, please.

[Hung @ Jan 27th 2008 10:40PM]

@ Zeus.:God

Yeah, that's in GENERAL. We're talking only about Crysis (possibly gaming in general). Have you ever played Crysis? It's a complete GPU hog. As long as the processor is dual-cored and isn't an ULV, the GPU will bottleneck the performance.

Anandtech's Triple SLI-setup showed that the 70% clock difference from a 3.33 GHz and 2.00 GHz shows at 39% decrease in perfomance (43.2→30.9)*. But the 40% rendering ability difference from a single GPU to SLI (2-way, mind you) shows a 108% increase in the frame rate (13→27)*. And in less physics intensive games such as Bioshock and Oblivion, the CPU makes even less of a difference.

The only real matter is whether or not the CPU contains multiple cores. Sure, an extremely poor multi-cored CPU will bottleneck SLI graphics, but not an average card. Pretty much any non-nitrogen cooled single-core processor, however, will bottleneck even integrated graphics.

You seriously need to shut up and stop telling people to do research. I've seen your comments on many threads and they always go back to how you know so much about computers and that others need to get their facts straight. You, Zeus.:God, need to follow your own advice.

*http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3183&p=4

[Zeus.:God @ Jan 28th 2008 12:58AM]

Hung: Ignorance at its finest. Do you always go off on a rant when you're word is contested?

Yes, I have played Crysis, yes, I know that its a hog, but not just a GPU hog; its a CPU hog, a memory hog- its an everything hog. Any type of processor can bottleneck a system, even if it was a quad core.

You pretty much just agreed with me in your last few statements. You went so far off from what I was saying, its not even funny.

[Hung @ Jan 28th 2008 5:30PM]

My word is contested? You're calling me ignorant? That's the hugest load of horseshit I've ever seen somone dump into a comment. My word wasn't even contested; the guy read my comment wrong. You're the one that tried acted like a know-it-all and failingly attempted to correct me when our comments were in accord. Then you go and talk shit about me for no reason at all.

"CPU would bottleneck it" -you
"Anything under a dual-core would bottleneck that setup in Crysis" -me
"ANY processors can bottle neck a system. Don't talk if you're this ignorant" -your anus
Seriously, how desperate for attention do you need to be in order to start shit with someone who isn't even talking to you? Nevertheless, someone who is right and CAN ACTUALLY support their claims?

"You pretty much just agreed with me in your last few statements. You went so far off from what I was saying, its not even funny."
You're right: it's not funny. It doesn't even make sense. I agreed with you, but strayed off? We weren't even addressing the same question. You said that the CPU would bottleneck that setup. I'm saying that Crysis is more dependent on multi-threading than it is on raw processing power.

"Any type of processor can bottleneck a system, even if it was a quad core." For the last time, this is true in general, but NOT in fucking Crysis. Yes, a C2D clocked at 2.66 GHz and a C2Q clocked at 3 GHz will yield different results, but minutely. Nothing like how a 3 GHz Pentium 4 and a 1.6 GHz C2D would differ. It has nothing to do with the CPU cache. Crysis NEEDS multi-threading to not turn into a powerpoint.

"An E4200 will bottle neck an 8800 GTX or Ultra" Do you know what bottlenecking is? It's not when you increase one thing and it shows no improvement. It's when you increase one thing and see some improvement, but the same degree of increase on another component yields a much greater improvement.

It's not when increasing the clock two-fold yields some difference. It's when increasing the rendering ability some yields twice the performce. And, no, an E4200 would not bottleneck an 8800 Ultra if you use that definition (NOT the system in general, JUST Crysis). Throwing on another 8800 would double the performance, but doubling the clock and core count would increase performance less than 50%.

My word isn't contested. It's like when people who are legitimately right get undercut by crazies because the listeners are too ignorant to tell the difference. Perhaps I'm too adamant on making sure people know I'm right when I know that I'm right. But you need to shut the fuck up and quit acting like you know something, because I haven't seen you write anything but shit. This debate is fucking over. Ask anyone who will read this thread. They'll tell you that (1) you don't know what you're talking about; (2) I've shown that I am right and you are wrong; (3) not just wrong, but conscious of being wrong; (4) way too confident of your computer knowledge, if it can be called that; and (5) desperate as hell to start an argument for no reason, whatsoever.

[Ted @ Jan 28th 2008 6:54PM]

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

lol

[eeeMan @ Feb 27th 2008 12:29AM]

Hung definately wins that fight. He is much more coherent and actually address the damn post

[maveric101 @ Mar 19th 2008 7:58PM]

actually Hung's wrong on one point. I'm pretty sure Crysis only uses 2 cores even with a quad core CPU. I saw a Crysis benchmark for a quad-core processor, and it fared only marginally better than a comparable clock speed dual core.

fine, i'll take the effort to back up my argument with sources...
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intel_Core_2_Extreme_QX9770_Performance_Preview/?page=9

[Allister @ Jan 27th 2008 6:05AM]

Oh please, please stop starting so many of your posts with "Sure,"!

It's driving me batty!

[Mobius_1 @ Jan 27th 2008 6:12AM]

Sure, I'm sure they will take your opinion into account, and surely won't do this anymore

sorry, couldn't resist

[CUBSWILLWIN @ Jan 27th 2008 9:10AM]

what are ya talkin about! there is only 2 posts counting this one that starts with sure on the front page.

[mattclarkie @ Jan 27th 2008 7:40AM]

I can't remember if Crysis is designed to work with a PhsyXics card, but if it was you could easily build a rig with a couple of good graphics cards and a couple of physXics cards, and that would take so much load off the processor that you could run it on pretty much any modern processor.

By run, they probably mean that the installer doesn't come up with incompatible hardware message.

[Shinigami @ Jan 27th 2008 8:56AM]

It runs Crysis! Woohoo! 1 fps makes people happy.... No one said they got 60 fps, no one said they got at least 10 fps. No, it won't be playable.
"I'm amazed Via has made a chip that can run anything, let alone Crysis."
They didn't say it will be able to run anything else ;)

I still think that if Mac Air can be done with dual-core processor, so can be UMPC! But that makes UMPC look as a better alternative compared to a Laptop (hint: compare prices of UMPCs and super-compact laptops).

Ok Via made a chip that can run Crysis. And IBM made a chip that powers PS3. So what? We want numbers!!! :)

[Abuzar @ Jan 27th 2008 10:53AM]

Well I'm sure when they say run they mean at least 15FPS. They might have been running it at lowest settings at 800*600, but so what?

[R1cebrner @ Jan 27th 2008 9:42AM]

I think your computer cost more than my car.

[ed @ Jan 27th 2008 9:48AM]

does anybody knows what is the percect setup to run crysis at full resolution with with every setting set on highest?

[Wolfticket @ Jan 27th 2008 1:27PM]

No.

[Juaquin @ Jan 27th 2008 6:31PM]

A quantum computer?

[Dan @ Jan 28th 2008 1:42AM]

your mom

[Ted @ Jan 28th 2008 7:05PM]

A human brain with a monitor plugged into it.

[emailtabs @ Jan 27th 2008 10:04AM]

Want one, need one, will probably keel over and die without one. come little chippy and live in me lappy.

[Abuzar @ Jan 27th 2008 10:56AM]

The 9800GX2 is out? Yeah that's what I thought. Take your wishlist elsewhere.