VIA C4

VIA C4 is a new range of CPUs of VIA, a successor of C3. These new processors adopt Socket 478 of Pentium 4 and are of course compatible with all the motherboards having this socket.

VIA profitable thus the licence of the bus Pentium 4 would make finally acquired in due form by the president of the company at the time on a recent voyage to Turkey (VIA did not want to reveal the price of this acquisition, but according to rumours, it would be the equivalent of 10 euros).

The starting frequency is announced as 1 GHz. C4 will have 128 KB of L2 mask. It is composed of 35 million transistors. VIA aims at the market of the entry of range. A version for portable computers is also envisaged.

Just like AMD, the company prefer to name it differently from its frequency. The version 1 GHz will be called "C4 500v" (hypothetically equivalent to Pentium 4 500 MHz in terms of performance).

Here is an explanation of this calculation of this "PR Rating":

• 1000 MHz X 1.8 = 1800
• 1800 / 3 = 600
• 600 X 4,5 = 2700
• 2700 / 5,4 = 500v

One can thus suppose that version 1500 MHz will be named:

• 1500 MHz X 1,8 = 2700
• 2700 / 3 = 900
• 900 X 4,5 = 4050
• 4050 / 5,4 = 750v

C4 500v (1000 MHz), 600v (1200 MHz), 650v (1300 MHz) and 700v (1400 MHz) should be launched in the beginning of 2004. Their price has not revealed yet. One criticized more than one once VIA for its sometimes misleading denominations, but one can only congratulate it also bravely to have given up the myth of the gigahertz.