Not trying to spoil Intel's parade at IDF in Shanghai, VIA has just announced two new mobile chipsets; well, it's really two versions of the one and the same. The VX800 and VX800U have been designed for what VIA calls "ultra thin and light notebooks" as well as mini PCs, embedded devices and UMPC. The VX800U has been specifically designed for the UMPC market as it has a lower power consumption than the standard VX800.

Both models sport DX9 compatible graphics with a 250MHz engine clock and up to 256MB of shared memory support, as well as hardware video decoding of MPEG2, MPEG3 and VC1 video. Other features include up to 4GB of DDR2 667MHz memory via two DIMMs, HD audio, SATA and IDE drive support, one x4 and two x1 PCIe interfaces, six USB 2.0 ports and support for various memory card standards.

The new chipset will work with all of VIA's current CPUs, as well as the upcoming Isaiah/CN processors. The VX800 has a maximum power consumption of 5W with the VX800U drawing 3.5W. VIA claims that a complete processor platform can draw as little as 7.5W with this new chipset.

The VX800 is expected to start shipping later this month and you can find out more about it here