It's really weird, but I've personally been waiting for the Via Isaiah processor since it was originally mentioned back in 2004 under the "C4, C5, etc" titles. Via quietly released the C7 processors, which were basically C3s with added features, and have been working on the secret Isaiah platform since.
I've always had a interest in Via processors ever since they came out with the Via C3 socket 370 processors in 2001. The processors were clocked at 500 - 733 mhz, and were quite cheap for the time (under $50), and TigerDirect said they were excellent budget performance processors ( a major lie). At the time, I had a socket 370 533mhz Pentium III processor and because I wasn't the smartest when it came to upgrading PCs at the time, I was planning to purchase a 733mhz C3 processor to replace my PIII.
I ended up not doing it, and instead went on and purchased a 950mhz Duron processor several months later.
In the years following the C3 CPUs, Via continue to release several different C3 and C7 processors, the later being soldered directly on motherboards. As the benchmarks came, these processors were pretty much absolutely terrible, while before they were launched Via would release a couple benchmark graphs trying to state that the processors consumed little power, yet were stronger than Intel's processors in specific benchmarks.
So what am I awaiting the Isaiah processors?
Because of one simple reason; I want to see if Via and Centaur are lying again. Via previously on several times have stated in the past that the C7 processors would be able to reach 2.5ghz, and actually be able to outperform Pentium 4 CPUs. This of course never happend. In the past several months, Via has stated that its new Isaiah architecture is not only cheaper than Intel's offerings, but also stronger in benchmarks. At the same time, Via and Centuar haven't released many 'samples' of the processors, and have provided only a few benchmark results (which could easily be fabricated, as Via has done in the past).
With the Isaiah processors supposedly coming in the very near future, I am anxious to see if Via is simply just lying again, or if they really do have a revolutionary CPU design. Because of the lack of news around the new processors which are again supposed to be released in the next couple of months, I am betting that the Isaiah architecture will just be another low performance processor platform.
But I am still anxiously waiting in hopes that I am wrong. Still, I wouldn't be worried at all if I was Intel, but I would be very worried if I was nVidia after their announcement of the $45 Vista Premium board / cpu / gpu.
