Volari Duo V8 Ultra (english version) Dátum: 2005. december 20. Írta: Németh Zoltán (Roadside) http://www.hoc.hu/http://www.hoc.hu/index.php?p=articles&y=57

The History of XGI

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!

Mobile solutions

Even for the mobile market, XGI offers 3 different solutions; all of them are developed by Trident as we've mentioned it before. XP5m64 The XP5m64 was designed for computers whose low power consumption is vital. XGI's very own CoolPower technology ensures that the chip produces 3,5W of heat at most. The XP5m64 has 25 million transistors only, manufactured on 0,13 micron process and comes in a 612-pin BGA socket. The memory controller is only 64 bit wide, but at least instead of taking up the system memory, it does have its own dedicated 64MB RAM. The chip itself supports TV, DVI and D-Sub output and capable of processing 2 pixels at one clock cycle with a clock speed of 230MHz. The XP5m64 is fully DirectX 8.1 compliant and furthermore comes with a technology called UltraClear which sharpens the image of TFT screens and tries to overcome some of the blur that is a result of motion pictures on such screens. There is no doubt, that the XP5m64 might be a good solution for computers handling 2D graphics, but it also has its weak points considering 3D. It's also to be mentioned that XGI is very proud of this chip for being more efficient than Intel's Centrino. In this case: more efficiency means longer battery life for your notebook of course. XP5m32 The little brother of XP5m64, producing slightly more heat (4,2W) on a lower clock frequency of 200MHz, and it only has 32MB of RAM. For the rest: it is alike of the m64.  XP5 The XP5 is the fastest among the mobile solutions of XGI. It comes with a clock speed of 250MHz, and its memory controller is 128bit wide. This chip is capable of supporting 128MB of external memory, although this feature is literally unnecessary in a mobile environment.

XP5m64   XP5m32   XP5   Specifications

Desktop products

Volari V3 Ultra The entry-level solution of XGI for desktop products is the Volari V3 which is practically the same as the XP5 core built on a card. It comes with two TMUs with two vertex units each. The V3's core frequency is only 200MHz, the memory controller is 128 bit wide, and has full hardware support for DX 8.1.  Volari V5 and V5 Ultra These two solutions might be at the interest of more. The chip features TruShader 2.1 technology, which means 2 independent pixel and vertex units with full hardware support of pixel and vertex shader units, version 2.0. Having 4 processing pipelines, HDTV and MPEG2 decoder features, the chip targets the lower segment of the middle-class products. The only difference between the V5 and the V5 Ultra is their operating frequency. The V5 comes with a core clock speed of 300MHz and 650MHz for the memories, while the Ultra operates at a remarkable 350/750MHz respectively. Volari V8 and V8 Ultra Luckily the naming of XGI's products is quite logical so it's easy to figure out, that the Volari V8 series come with the support for 8 processing pipelines, compared to 4 in the V5 series. It's important to point out, that this chip has double the amount of pixel shader units (4) but remained at 2 vertex shader units which is quite a shame. It's a shame when we compare it to either the ATI Radeon 9800 series (4) or the NVIDIA GeForce FX 59x0 3 vertex shaders oppositely with the Volari's 2. The Volari V8 and V8 Ultra has the same operating frequency as the V5 series: 300/650 for the V8 and 350/750MHz for the Ultra version. When examining the V8 series: it's worth taking a closer look at the memory controller called BroadBahn. XGI's own memory controller divides the access of the memory into four, 128 bit wide channels, which means theoretically 512 bit memory bandwidth inside. Unfortunately, the physical memory can only be accessed through 32 bit channels; which means 128bit wide controller in reality.   For those of you, who liked such puffed-up marketing names as BroadBahn or UltraClrear, we have some more to share. ChiperVideo for instance is responsible for the perfect image quality, when watching TV on your Volari, and handles the special data flow of DVD video. It does have some other, yet unknown features as well.   ColorAmp however is a more interesting feature which we've come across for the first time in graphic chip history. The technology automatically adjusts the colour settings for different applications, giving you rich, vivid pictures. The feature can also be turned off, or manually set. Intelli-Vision is somewhat connected to ColorAmp: it changes the level of gamma when the card is in 3D mode, resulting in perfectly bright pictures. Volari Duo V5/V8 and V5/V8 Ultra Finally, the highpoint of our article, we introduce you the Volari Duo series. Who did get this far reading our article, might already know what the interesting thing is about the current flagship of XGI's products. That thing is the dual core support or to be precise two graphic chip on one card. Even though XGI has designed the V5 series with the same support, this feature is obviously more interesting when we talk about the high-end V8 series. In the past, quite a few companies have tried to do the same design, but the feature which is quite successful in the professional environment somehow never really enjoyed success on the desktop market. The first steps towards this feature dates back to the Voodoo2 era, when 3dfx called it SLI. That meant not 2 chips on one card, but 2 cards working together processing one image, which is obviously related to nowadays solutions. Anyone, who could afford two of either the 8MB or 12MB versions of Voodoo2s to have SLI, got extraordinary graphics performance those days. Due to the price tag it carried, this solution was very rare. The next huge step forward was ATI's, with the introduction of Rage Fury MAXX, which was a true 2-chip card, giving blazing speed. It's success and faith was sealed by the arrival of the GeForce 256 soon after and the lack of stable drivers in time. 3dfx's Voodoo5 5500 came just too late, and the synchronization of the 2 VSA-100 chips were not quite perfect either. The 4-chip implementation of a VSA-100 on 1 card (the Voodoo 5 6000) officially have never even seen the sunlight or the shelves to be precise. It's time to get to the testing, but before we do that, there is something which is quite important to mention. Anyhow these products (especially the Volari Duo V8 Ultra) will perform; XGI has got very aggressive plans for the near future. According to rumours around the company, they plan to come out 6 months after the arrival of ATI's R420 with a whole new generation of graphic cards. It can also be a huge advantage, that XGI's engineers could get an efficient dual core design up and running, which is quite an achievement if we consider the complexity of today's chip designs. One more data to be mentioned: XGI plans to sell 200 000 chips this year and a whooping 4 million in year 2004. Frankly, they surely don't lack of self-confidence.

V3 Ultra   V5/V5 Ultra   V8/V8 Ultra   Duo V5/V8 & V5/V8 Ultra   BitFluent technologie   Structure   Specifications

Appearance

Coming back to the real subject of our article, the Volari Duo V8 Ultra, let's take a closer look at the card itself. The box is of good quality, as we've got used to it from Club3D. It contains the card itself, some mid-quality cables, a DVI converter and 4 CDs, including WinDVD 4, Cyberlink's PowerDirector 2.0, a driver CD and XGI's Undersea Lab. Latter is a Macromedia Flash-based software, which creates an underwater lab environment, where you can walk around, and play some games, while getting every information about XGI itself. The Volari Duo is one of the largest cards on the market today, and has some interesting features, such as the double 4-pin Molex plug at the edge of the card. It is quite heavy, and comes with two independent heatsink and fan units on the two chips. The fans have a trendy bluish led built in, and unfortunately make 32-34dBA noise each. That is the same amount of noise that you have to handle with an average CPU cooler, but twice of course. The quality of the heatsink on the card is very good though, and what is more, there is a PROPER heatsink at the back of the card as well, compared to those thin copper membranes that can be seen on either the RADEON 9800XT or on some GeForce 5xxx products. All is not gold that glitters (or copper): the heatsink on the back of the card is an aluminium one, in a copper-coloured disguise. We were quite stunned and still are: why do manufacturers choose this way of saving a few quid? During heavy load, the temperature of the sink reached 48 degrees celsius, which is quite a good figure, if you consider the fact that 2 GPUs and 16 memory modules produces the heat. A Volari is not a beauty of course: a regiment of capacitors and the plastic plate that covers the fans made us quite disappointed. Perhaps the engineers knew that and that's why they included those nice blue leds on the card. Still on the back of the card: Club3D armed their Duo V8 Ultra with a Conexant Bt835 digital video decoder, which we think is perfect for the job.   The cooling of the memory chips is somewhat cheap. Where the heatsink joins the memory: the copper plate is no longer extruded but they glue some small, flexible (plastic like) rectangle pieces on top of the memory chips. Perhaps these thermal pads help to transfers heat well, but we think it can never come close to the performance of a proper contact and some thermal paste between the two surfaces. Unfortunately it is very likely, that we will see similar solutions in the foreseeable future from other manufacturers, as they try to reduce cost even on such small things like this. The memory chips on the card are GDDR2 modules made by Samsung, and can, and should operate at 1000MHz, which is the maximum, according to the manufacturer. Unfortunately we were unable to overclock them during our test.

Links XGI Volari Duo V8 Ultra memory Conexant Bt835 Digital Video Decoder

The inner content

The XGI Volari cards have their own drivers of course, named Reactor. After having Detonator, Radeonator, Catalyst and Reactor we wonder what comes up next in the minds of the marketing departments. The looks of the current, 1.0 version of the Reactor drivers is quite poor, and as we will go into detail soon: the functions are not too far from it either. Bringing up the screen properties menu, a window comes up, which is divided into 6 sections, where we can do the colour calibration, adjust contrast, activate the TV output, or set the desired 3D settings for games. Sounds quite good, but in reality hardly any of these functions are currently available. As XGI confirmed, this is a driver issue, which means some functions are simply disabled. This is quite troubling, even though the cards based on Volari products can only be seen recently on storeshelves. We do think though, that whoever spends quite a lot of money on such a graphic card as the Duo V8 Ultra might be right to expect 100% compatibility and operability. We would personally expect the drivers to be called “beta” with a version number of 0.XX until all functions are available. On the driver CD that came with the card (and even on the Internet), version 1.0 is the only currently available Reactor. With a release date of 19th of November, it is truly something where XGI should make huge improvements and make haste. After the physical installation, the software for the card is easy to install, and after rebooting the computer, it is ready for operation. We came across only 1 error message during installation and that was a warning about the AGP aperture size, which you should set for 128MB at least in the BIOS of your motherboard. The lack of settings in the display menu are somewhat balanced in another feature, the Volari Tray, which of course is a program in a shape of a tray icon, just like ATI's, and NVIDIA's similar solutions. The Volari Tray comes with some useful features, such as the PowerManager which displays the temperature of both GPUs, and a tachometer for the fans on the GPUs.It also displays the relevant voltage of the graphic and the memory chips. The beta state of the drivers can easily be spotted here as well, as only one of the fans rpm is displayed. The temperatures of the GPUs were only 40 degrees idle, but rose to 55C on full load. It was interesting to see during our test, that the temperature of the 2nd GPU on the card was somewhat (1-2 degrees) higher than the other's. Volari Tray's other feature is a virtual desktop manager, which is quite easy to use, but definitely not our cup of tea with its UFO-like shape and strange looks. There are some information about the state of the AGP bus as well in the menu, but to be perfectly honest, XGI could've done the Volari Tray more clean-cut. Again, just like ATI or NVIDIA has done it. We do think however, that this can be changed, and will be changed with the arrival of newer Reactor versions. We can only praise the quality of the video-out feature. Using TV we've discovered such settings as AntiFlicker which kind of speaks for its name: it helps reducing the flicker on the TV. When playing movies, we chose a film with vivid colours (Pigglet BIG Movie) and found that we could hardly make any distinction between the quality of the movie on the screen and on the TV. There are improvements to be made on the software of course, but the excellent image quality is not only the result of the integrated Conexant chip, but also the previously mentioned Cipher™ Video processor takes some credit as well.

Testing conditions

Before we get to the numbers we must point out that due to the lack of proper drivers, neither the anti-aliasing nor the anisotropic filter could be turned on. In the display properties menu, the performance-quality bar didn't work either, and the clock speed of the card was 328/900MHz, even though the final number for the Volari Duo V8 Ultra will be 350/1000MHz. During our test, we've used the most popular games of year 2003, FutureMark's 3DMark03 with the latest patch, which is version 340. Even though, the graphic chip makers own optimizations didn't get too much space, we did use our own demos for testing. The basic settings are as follows: We ran every test 3 times, and took their average as the result During the test we used FRAPS version 2.0 that shows the frames per second during gameplay, and at the ending it gives the average number of displayed frames Besides speed, image quality is equally important nowadays. That is why we've played all games, demos and benchmarks at the highest possible quality settings. This approach was the same (highest settings) for the cards as well, but this time there were some minor differences among various programs. We turned off both anti-aliasing and the anisotropic filter during testing. Tuning: because XGI has disabled this function, tuning was ruled out, even though we've tried changing the appropriate registry settings, it didn't quite work out. The Test rig was as follows: ABIT NF7-S AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 2x256 MB Corsair XMS PC 3500 memory 80 GB Maxtor ATA133 (7200 RPM) Windows XP SP1 Drivers: ForceWare 53.03 WHQL, Catalyst 3.9, Reactor 1.00 Tested games Tron 2 Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy Halo Elite Force 2 Tomb Raider: TAOD Splinter Cell Delta Force BHD C&C Generals Unreal 2 Contract JACK   Other applications and benchmarks Futuremark 3DMark03 build 340 Aquamark Shadermark v2.0 build 1c Fraps 2.0 build 1787 During our test, we've used a lot of games to see how stable the Reactor drivers are, and what can someone expect if he/she chooses to obtain a Volari for pro-gaming purposes in the near future. As you'll see later on only a few games were able to run without hiccups.

Links Futuremark 3DMark03 Fraps Aquamark 3 ShaderMark   3DMark03 Fraps Aquamark3 Shadermark

Uncertainties: the World is about optimizing

The most difficult task we've faced was to get similar image quality during our test among the contestants. We've failed to achieve a 100% match, simply because the image settings for the Volari were disabled. In order to get the closest result, we took the Volari's image quality and tried adjusting ATI's and NVIDIA's quality to the same level. What we have experienced: During OpenGL-based games, the Volari gave the same image quality as the rest on the highest detail Using DirectX applications it was not the same, as every program we took gave us different results, so we couldn't really come to a single conclusion on these. 3DMark03 We could only suspect -before our test- the performance of XGI's products by having seen some 3DMark03 results leaked out a couple of months ago. Those numbers meant something for all of us, and a result of that: everybody expected the Duo V8 Ultra to perform equally to a Radeon 9800/9800Pro. That is why we've started our synthetic benchmarking with Futuremark's 3DMark03. The test ran flawlessly, and the Volari got almost 5000 points, which made us quite curious. When we began our analysis of the image quality we came across some interesting things though. The first thing we've noticed was the lack of displaying everything on the picture: some objects that can be seen on either an ATI or NVIDIA card were simply not there, using the Volari. Leaves, bushes disappeared, but the most interesting thing was the shadow and lighting relationship. On the picture with the rocks, it's easy to point out, that the Volari “forgot” to display some effects. There are no shadows under the stone, and the bump-mapping effect on that stone looks quite different from what we've got used to, not to mention the lighting of the image. (Image on the right.) The image with the turtle (in the downloadable pack) has more of those strange effects: disappearing objects, etc. Apart from this, we would like to point out 3 differences on that image: The texture of the ground looks better on the Volari. Strange lights, shadows again. The texture of the turtle is a bit more blurry on the Volari. Click for full size image! The missing leaves These images are 90% compressed .jpg files, but on the right, you can download the original, 100% quality image packs as well. A few weeks ago someone found traces of Volari might be among those, who optimize their drivers as well for most of those games and benchmarks that are often being used by sites like us. XGI later on partly admitted on having optimizations, but all we need to understand from it, is the fact that everybody turns to these methods nowadays.

Downloadable pictures 3DMark03 package 1 (2,7 MB) 3DMark03 package 2 (2,4 MB) Compressed: RAR 3.20         Click for full size image!   3DMark03 Fill Rate   3DMark03 Shaders   3DMark03

ShaderMark 2.0 - AquaMark 3

ShaderMark 2.0   For our first true DirectX 9 test, we've used a program called “ShaderMark” and of course the latest, 2.0 version. Surprisingly, when using the Gigabyte GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, we've got “not supported pixel shader” message from the program several times. Altogether only 14 out of the 22 test ran flawlessly, oppositely with the ATI-based cards, which completed all 22. XGI's solutions are not exceptions from this point-of-view either: they support one shader more, than NVIDIA's current solution. This might create confusion and a feeling, that shader-wise these cards are not fully DircetX 9 solutions, however it's worth mentioning, that Microsoft did NOT define clearly the specifications of a true DirectX 9 card. Theoretically, if a card supports pixel and vertex-shader 2.0 –even only one of them- it has to be recognized as a DirectX 9 card. Using ShaderMark 2.0 some shaders have special requirements, such as the floating point textures which currently supported only by the ATI Radeon 9500+ series. Perhaps the next generation of NVIDIA cards due out in the 2nd quarter of 2004, will be able to run all tests of ShaderMark current version. (We'd like to thank at this point for all the help Thomas Bruckschlegel - developer of ShaderMark). Sadly enough, we are unable to present you with numbers, and figures, due to the fact that the Volari caused BSoD during this bench. This was the only major problem, we've encountered during our test though.   Aquamark 3 Yet another program, capable of presenting DirectX 9 performance numbers, but this time we've only used it to analyse image quality once more. We've came across similar issues, we've spotted previously using 3DMark. Additional lighting effects can be seen for which is a good example the image on the right with the green light. We were unable to determine, whether the unusual handling of lighting and shadow is good during the test. Click for full size image!   On the next picture, some plants in the distance are a bit different from the two big's image. Personally, we've liked the Volari's way of displaying the image. Click for full size image!   On the last image, a blurred knob should be seen. We have to admit, that some of the bubbles in Aquamark were best displayed on ATI cards, and worst on the Volaris. Click for full size image!   Again, these images are 90% compressed .jpg files, but on the right, you can download the original, 100% quality image packs as well.

Shadermark, unsupported shaders                           Click for full size image! The Green Light       Downloadable pictures AquaMark package 1 (1,7 MB) AquaMark package 2 (534 KB) Compressed: RAR 3.20

Engines: Unreal Warfare - Quake 3

The Unreal Warfare engine

We began our test with Unreal II: The Awakening because it looks stunning and has a mature-enough engine, to be tested. During the game-play we only came across minor screen failures, and only experienced them during changes of colour: we saw a ghost image for a short period of time. Apart from these hardly noticeable effects, the Volari has passed the bar. We've used our own demo to avoid any optimizations by the manufacturer.

 

Quake 3 engine

After a D3D using engine of Unreal, we took the 4-years old OpenGL-based Quake3 engine. There is no telling, how many excellent games are written using the same engine, but the game, Star Trek Elite Force 2 is one of those. The Volari proved to be an excellent choice for such games, as we've tested a few more of these games, such as Star Wars Jedi Academy, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, but never came across any screen errors, or failure.

The Jupiter system

The third place goes to Touchdown Entertainment concerning the value of sold graphic engine for games. Their developments were the basic for games such as Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, Blood 2: The Chosen etc. The Volari family did not generate any errors, or faced any problems, just like we've seen it under OpenGL based solutions, the cards (and the drivers) proved to be rock stable. The only interesting we've found was concerning the resolution of the games, and all games with the Jupiter enginge. The funny thing was, that after the 1152x864 resolution, the next step was 1600x1200, skipping our much desired 1280x1024 resolution. The next test: Contract JACK is an expansion of No One Lives Forever 2, and shows, that the Volari Duo V8 Ultra did not perform very well here either.

 

Tron 2

Currently the most advanced game based on Jupiter: Tron 2 is still a DirectX 8.1 game.

Halo - Splinter Cell

Halo

In our test it became quite clear that we have to pay with many frames per second, in order to get Halo's stunning looks, and get it moving smoothly. Having the highest details, and using pixelshader 2.0 gets even the best on their knees. Halo uses DirectX 9 which made us quite curious about the results. Sadly, the results speak for themselves, although the game ran smoothly: no driver issues were found here.

 

Splinter Cell

Altough Splinter Cell is not new to us, it puts any graphic cards under heavy stress. The XGI Volari Duo V8 Ultra showed some of the best performance here among our test, and the application was rock stable again. The tests were ran using the highest detail.

Anomalies - Conclusion

Anomalies

As a result of the beta drivers, our most important task was to see XGI's stability and compatibility. We've stressed the card with dozens of games to give you a list of problems we've encountered during our tests.

1. Prince of Persia SOT – blurry image, unplayable.
2. Tomb Raider TAOD – missing graphical effects, (in TAOD's settings menu, the vertex shader is disabled).
3. Delta Force BHD – Switching to NightVision mode, the image falls apart.
4. In some cases the mouse scroll becomes very slow.
5. Collin McRae Rally 3 – missing effects.
6. Gunmetal – too slow to play.
7. Max Payne 2 - frozen.
8. Will Rock - frozen within few minutes.

Some more programs we've tried, and run perfectly:

1. Warcraft 3.
2. C&C Generals
3. Call of Duty
4. Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy
5. Unreal Tournament 2003
6. Return The Castle Wolfeinstein  

Conclusion

Beta drivers, disabled functions, and lower clock speeds. Keeping in mind these factors we have to judge carefully about the Volari-family, but somehow we've felt one thing during the whole test. We've felt that below the immature surface of the drivers, something beneath carried a true value. “Surprisingly” the card performed best under 3DMark 03 which we felt was only eye-catching and disturbed us most. Three questions came to our minds having seen, and tested thoroughly XGI's current flagship. CAN the Volari deliver such performance it showed under a well-known benchmark? What is the price of such performance? What optimizations and imagery sacrifices have to be made in order to deliver that performance?

Pros:

• Even though it is a new product, we've found it quite stable.
• Beautiful colours.
• The quality of the TV-Output is exceptionally good.
• Some good software features (adjusting TV-out, etc.).
• The most popular games ran flawlessly

Cons:

• Noisy fans.
• Not satisfactory performance.
• Not user-friendly software bundle.

At the end of our late December test, the Volari rests in it's box, awaiting for new, more stable drivers. We'll surely run the same benchmarks and test as those new drivers are out, and will be able to give a more round picture about the true performance of the card. If XGI's engineers pay more attention to the compilations of new drivers (not as they've used to for the Xabre) and avoid unnecessary spotlight about optimizations: they surely have a chance to grab some customer's attention and more importantly earn their trust. We do hope, that ABIT, and other manufacturers come out with a re-designed cooling of the card, because this was perhaps the most annoying about the product. Until all these, we have to give kudos to XGI, and we definitely ask for more.

 

UPDATE!: The new Volari drivers (more info, and experiences additional 4 pages)

 

The Volari Duo V8 Ultra for our test was provided by Pulsar Hungary Ltd. We'd also like to thank Co-Run Ltd for providing us with the Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and the Gigabyte GeForce FX 5700 Ultra cards.

 

 

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The Gallery

The AGP Aperture Size warning   The UnderWater Lab's screen   Jedi Knight JA on the Volari   Gigabyte GeForce FX 5700 Ultra   Gigabyte GeForce FX 5700 Ultra   Gigabyte GeForce FX 5700 Ultra

C&C Generals on the Volari   Collin McRae Rally 3 on the Volari   The Volari's lights.   The Volari and the new Gigabyte CPU cooler.   Gigabyte GeForce FX 5700 Ultra