X-bit labs

Club3D Volari Duo V8 Ultra Review: XGI Volari Family Coming to Graphics Market (page 32)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov , Tim Tscheblockov

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

So, what can XGI actually offer us today?

• DirectX 9.0 graphics processors with a list of features similar to that of ATI Technologies solutions, but shorter than that of NVIDIA and S3 Graphics solutions;
• Online and offline promotion, pretty known trade mark in the computer industry;
• Some relations with several graphics card makers, potential opportunity to sign a lot of contracts.

What can’t XGI offer us today?

• High or at least mainstream performance even of the most expensive top model;
• High image quality in games because of “optimizations”;
• High shader processing speed;
• Real anisotropic filtering;
• FSAA;
• Efficient memory bandwidth saving technologies;
• “Fair game”: no cheats in games and benchmarks;
• Low power consumption.

As a result, we see that XGI developers didn’t address the matter seriously enough. The attempt to present the solution as if it were much better than it actually is, is the worst thing that could be done, because the users, as well as analysts are usually very suspicious towards the manufacturers caught cheating. In the end, I do not understand why they decided to integrate DirectX 9.0 feature into a solution, which cannot do texturing, lacks memory bandwidth saving technologies, etc.

If XGI doesn’t improve the situation with the image quality and performance of their Volari in the near future, we will have every reason to state that their debut in the consumer 3D graphics market turned out a failure. We will carefully follow the events here, to make sure that you always know the latest news.

Although we are not so positive about the situation with XGI Company, we have to stress one very important thing, though. When we were working on this article, the top model from Volari family, Volari Duo V8 Ultra, cost $499. In fact, this is much higher than most of the today’s graphics accelerators actually cost. Take for instance, RADEON 9800 XT or GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which sell for less, and at the same time offer much better performance and image quality.

In conclusion, we have to say a few words about the retail solution based on the notorious XGI Volari Duo V8 Ultra chip: Club3D Volari Duo V8 Ultra.

Highs:

• Beautiful looks;
• VIVO support;
• Rich software bundle.

Lows:

• Low performance;
• Low 3D image quality;
• Problems with the drivers;
• Optimizations for selected applications;
• Loud noise;
• High heat dissipation;
• Big weight;
• Bulky PCB design;
• Two connectors on the system PSU;
• High price.

As you can notice, the list of drawbacks is considerably longer than the list of advantages, which will hardly help Club3D Volari Duo V8 Ultra to become a successful product.