Volari Duo V8 Ultra (english version)

Translated from Hungarian to English by ArcHDeVil

Ever since the death of 3dfx back in year 2000, the graphic chip market has became literally bipolar. Even though there were some companies who tried to show something new, none of them could survive. But here comes a company called eXtreme Graphics Innovation which tries to get some share from the imaginary cake with a line-up of products worthy of note.

The company's short history goes back to May this year when the graphic chip design crew of SiS (Silicon Integrated Systems) excelled and reborn under the new name XGI. The previously known SiS Xabre II, with very promising features, has been renamed to Volari: the subject of our current article. Later on this year, parts of Trident Microsystems has joined the company: their work is represented in XGI's mobile line of products. The split up of SiS and XGI was primarily due to the fact that SiS used to produce lower to middle class products, but the new graphic chip –according to their hopes at least- intended to be among the high-end solutions. XGI's roadmap is nothing but daring: the company intends to produce profit by the end of 2005 and take top market share by 2007. Luckily, in order to fulfil these goals, XGI already has one of the key elements: the support of top manufacturers. We have definite knowledge of well-known companies such as Club 3D and ABIT to produce Volari products and that is quite an achievement considering that the product-family has literally come from scratch. XGI's movement is –luckily- not unintentional. Compared to those companies that had died recently: XGI is not only targeting one or two segments of the market, but they target the whole market itself with a product family capable of providing solutions for all segments of the market. Let us take a closer look at these products!