VIA Technologies started to sell its C3 processors with 1.0GHz core frequency last week in Japan. What is ridiculous, VIA began selling its CPU six month after the original announcement in early June (see this news-story). Even keeping in mind that VIA promised to start supplying the mentioned chips in August, the so long postpone of the actual launch is extremely strange.

VIA’s C3 processor is manufactured at TSMC using 0.13 micron fabrication technology and due to the small number of transistors involved can work without massive cooling systems. Other features include 128KB Level 1 and 64KB Level 2 full speed cache, as well as MMX and 3DNow! multimedia instructions. The novelty that is a little bit already late utilises Socket 370 form factor and 100MHz FSB. In contrast to predecessors, the 1.0GHz C3 processor’s core voltage was lifted to 1.45V from 1.35V of the C3 933MHz.

VIA Technologies’ C3 1.0GHz CPU costs approximately $55 to $65 in the Country of the Rising Sun. Quite a lot, considering C3’s poor performance in almost all applications.