Not so long ago VIA announced VB8003 motherboard for multimedia. One of the main its features is a separate
S3 435 ULP graphics processor with 256 MB GDDR3 memory. Combined with
VX800 media system processor (which has its on integrated graphics) the motherboard has two HDMI ports and DVI, VGA as well. However, it is interesting how two graphics will perform in one time (as one hdmi comes from integrated graphics and the other one from 435 ULP as well as one vga from integrated and dvi from 435 ULP)... Is it possible to attach four monitors at once (2xHDMI, 1xDVI and 1xVGA) is unknown for me too. It appeared on some on-line shops for about ~225EUR without VAT. Despite interesting features, this price neglects it's attractiveness IMHO. What is more, a visible port which resembles pci-e x4 is some proprietary video capture port which is not compatible with pci-e. It is a biggest disappointment for me as I expected to used for some additional SATA ports or other pci-e boards. I don't know any board with such port even on VIA side (they said that it would be possible to add some video capture board or additional com ports which aren't interesting for me). The other disappointment is two fans on cpu and graphics processor. It will add more noise which is not very acceptable for htpc solution. I believe that it is possible to make it even fanless or at least to leave only one fan, however, VIA never tried to do such solutions (trying to save costs here?). Instead of standard audio jacks you have two rca jacks. However, you can get audio jacks in the front panel. One more good thing is
dual Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 ports. There is one COM port. It is probably for embedded purposes as it is not used much in daily life. You also have LPC port for additional COM daughterboards and usb pin headers for WLAN (b/g) through USB module or expansion module for four additional USB ports and some mfc header for multifunction security module. There is Compact flash connector on the back instead of mini-pci like in vb8001 and vb7002 motherboards. You can see it as plus if you want to save some energy but most likely it won't be used. You need SO-DIMM DDR2 memory too.
I planned to buy it after first announcement however price, two fans, video capture port instead of pci-e and some other minuses holds me back for now. I see it as failure as VIA VT310-DP was (interesting thing but the price/performance just unacceptable) but I might be wrong. Probably there are more interesting solutions and you can replace 435 ULP with low-end NVIDIA and ATI discrete graphics which will have the same or even better and guaranteed performance (as it is quite difficult to find anything about 435 ULP performance). I haven't found any reviews of the board yet. So that's all about it from me.
