Indianapolis (IN) - Via announced a new mainboard today that, according to its manufacturer, will help system vendors to undercut the latest Energy Star power requirements by 50%.

Powered by a C7-D desktop processor at 1.5 GHz (with SpeedStep down to 400 MHz), the PC3500 desktop mainboard is aiming for applications with low performance targets and has been Microsoft certified for the basic mode of Windows Vista. It sports Via’s Chome9 HC IGP, DirectX 9.0 with 2D and 3D acceleration as well as a Chomotion 3.0 video engine for hardware video assistance.

Via said that DVD playback can be enabled at only 34.48 watts total system power consumption (CPU + mainboard + memory + drive) using the board. Total idle power consumption is 23.62 watts, compared to the 50 watt requirement of Energy Star A.

The reference system comes with 512 MB memory, a Maxtor 80 GB IDE HDD, a DVD-Combo drive and a 180 watt power supply. It has two DIMM slots and can support up to 2 GB of DDR2-667. There is only one PCIe x16 slot, one PCI slot, four USB 2.0 ports, SATA II/PATA connectors, 10/100 Ethernet, 8-channel on-board audio. Options include Gigabit Ethernet, S-Video and S/PDIF audio. The recommended OS is Windows Vista Home Basic.