14 DAY TRIAL // AMD's launch of the Brazos platform has left VIA in a difficult position as the company now has to battle two of the largest chip manufacturers in the world with its low-power solutions, but that hasn't stopped Jetway from launching a motherboard based on the company's Nano L2007 CPU.
Dubbed the MVB-VX9GSM, the most distinctive feature of the motherboard is its unique form factor that fits somewhere between mini-ITX and the now defunct DTX standard.
Going for this PCB size has enabled VIA to add a second expansion slot to the board, as the MVB-VX9GSM packs a full-length PCI Express x16 slot, which is able to provide eight PCIe lanes to the add-on card installed, as well as a regular PCI slot.
In addition, the motherboard is also equipped with two DDR3 slots, that can take up to 4GB of RAM memory, as well as with two SATA ports.
The layout, however, is less than optimal as removing or installing a memory module requires unplugging the graphics card from its slot, while the two SATA ports are placed in a really hard to reach spot.
As stated earlier, the board is powered by a single core VIA Nano L2007 processor that is built using the 65nm manufacturing technology, is clocked at 1.6GHz, and has an estimated TDP of 25W.
Jetway has paired the CPU with a VIA VX900 chipset that features a hardware HD video decoder capable of playing back MPEG-2, H.264 and Windows Media Video-based codecs including VC-1 at full 1080p resolutions, VIA Vinyl HD Audio controller supports, advanced display connectivity as well as a DirectX 9 graphics engine clocked at 250MHz.
Moving to the back of the board, users will find six USB 2.0 ports, a D-sub and HDMI port, a 10/100Mbit Ethernet port and three audio jacks for 5.1-channel audio.
Details regarding pricing and availability were not disclosed together with the motherboard.