X-bit labs

Club3D Volari Duo V8 Ultra Review: XGI Volari Family Coming to Graphics Market (page 4)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov , Tim Tscheblockov

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

Well, now we should only wait and see if our concerns about the low efficiency of the new Volari Duo solution will be proven or denied by the benchmark results. And in the meanwhile, let’s dwell a little bit more on the peculiarities and features of the new graphics chip from XGI.

According to the developer, BroadBahn Memory Architecture optimized the work of the memory subsystems due to a number of technologies based on compression algorithms. Well, this is at least a kind of attempt to optimize the things, where NVIDIA and ATI spent thousands of hours of work.

I would also like to point out Cipher Video Processor technology intended to improve deinterlacing quality during DVD playback. This technology uses Pixel shaders 2.0 and ensures excellent image quality. XGI claims that the image quality in this case is as good as that provided by the top-end DVD players.

Graphics Card Makers or XGI Goes Partner-Hunting

You know very well now that developing a VPU is only half of the work you need to do to successfully enter the graphics market. You also have to attract people’s attention and make potential partners interested in the new product. It is really surprising but almost immediately XGI managed to sign a very successful agreement with one of the largest European graphics card manufacturer: Club3D Company. This company is not only known for high-quality products, but also easily gets very excited about new non-standard solutions. Otherwise, how would you explain the fact that Club3D will offer the users not only the whole bunch of solutions on NVIDIA and ATI chips, but also some products based on the graphics processors from the less famous developers, such as SiS, S3 Graphics and even PowerVR?

Anyway, this company got really interested in the new Volari family. So far, Volari based graphics cards are manufactured and supplied by Club3D and CP Technology. But the rumors about ASUS, ABIT, Gigabyte, Chaintech and even MSI considering the possibility to design their cards on the XGI products continue circulating around the Web.

XGI is still very optimistic and claims that they will be able to significantly increase their supplies in 2004. Will they manage to win a part of the market where the two giants, NVIDIA and ATI, continue their eternal rivalry? What gives XGI the confidence: the technological advantages or anything else? We will do our best to answer these questions in our today’s article devoted to Club3D Volari Duo V8 Ultra.