X-bit labs

Club3D Volari Duo V8 Ultra Review: XGI Volari Family Coming to Graphics Market (page 13)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov , Tim Tscheblockov

[ 01/15/2004 | 01:47 PM ]

Synthetic Benchmarks: Geometry, Vertex Shaders Speed

This is a geometrical benchmark, therefore, it demonstrates how efficient the vertex processors of the tested solutions are. Volari Duo vertex processors are very slow, even though the two chips installed onto a single PCB feature 4 of them.

At first glance it seems as if the card from Club3D were catching up with the competitors. However, in reality it is the competitors, which slow down as the number of light sources in the scene increases. We have every evidence that Volari vertex processors are slow and not very efficient, but it is very strange to see it perform equally fast with one and 8 light sources. If it doesn’t result from some cheats in the drivers, then Volari really should have some potential here. However, in the meanwhile we get the impression that something prevents T&L units (or their vertex shader emulations) from showing their real best, because as we see the number of light sources in the testing scene doesn’t have even the tiniest influence on Volari’s performance.

Vertex shader version 1.1 benchmark once again demonstrates that vertex processors of our Volari Duo are far from the fastest, even though this time the lag is somewhat smaller compared with what we saw in High Poly Count. All in all, this is not a bad result for an average solution. But again: Volari Duo is positioned as a high-end product.

The benchmark for vertex processors 2.0 included into 3DMark03 showed us nothing new: Volari’s vertex processors are really slow. All other testing participants work at much higher clock frequencies, but this cannot serve as an excuse for a product tending to compete with contemporary high-end solutions.