PR: Club-3D announces the complete Volari range of products

[Mendel]

doesn't seem to be in the press releases section, so...

XGI Volari Series Announcement
2004-11-17

Club-3D announces the complete Volari range of products based on the XG40 DirectX 9 compliant GPU.

New products based on the XG40 will be positioned in the entry thru mainstream market. The first wave of new Volari products will contain the following products;

XGI Volariâ„¢ V3 is the first product bringing the Low Profile format together with DirectX 9 technology and S-video/composite/HDTV output to entry levels. This is worlds best card for entry level PC's with high-end specifications!

XGI Volariâ„¢ V5 the perfect partner if you are seeking for a smooth, powerful graphics solution for your PC without requiring a bleeding-edge performance. Expanding the broad features of the Volariâ„¢ V3 with a more powerful 3D engine allows you to control demanding gaming applications.

XGI Volariâ„¢ V8 When playing games and advanced display outputs are your core business, the Volariâ„¢ V8 will not disappoint you. XGI's most powerful 3D engine is running on maximum clock speeds to offer you the best gaming performance based on the XG40 GPU platform.

Expected launch date is middle of December 2004

Check the websites for more information:
www.club-3d.com
www.xgitech.com

I'm fully dumbfounded by this all. What are they doing exactly, re-releasing these products?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Was their old chip named XG30 or something and they feel the need to resequence to "stay competitive" with ATi & nVidia? :|

 

[Mendel]

I have no idea, with no specs I still suppose they are using the exact same chips and just down and dirty trying to sell their inventory with a relaunch. I hope I'm all wrong though.

edit: and if I am indeed wrong, the naming scheme of the cards is very confusing. Volari V3 V5 and V8 again, wtf?

If Nvidia released Geforce FX 5800 again, who would buy it this time around?

edit: from what I can gather from the xgi website, the products seem to indeed be the same ones. still 128 bit memory, still 8 pipelines, still DDR2.
http://www.xgitech.com/products/products_2.asp?P=2&CTID={EDF1688A-3C90-464B-8689-0CC686638012}

So I guess that brings back the question of...wtf?

 

[Rolf N]

Are all of these cards already available in Finland and/or the US?

I can't find Volari V3/V5/V8 anywhere in/near Germany. And I've been looking regularly for a year. The only thing you can actually buy is the V8 Ultra Duo, but that doesn't fit my needs.

If this PR means that the vanilla Volari V8 is soon going to ship "world wide", I'm pleased.

 

[Mendel]

Are all of these cards already available in Finland and/or the US?

They were available for few weeks, then I guess even the stores realized what utter crap they were selling and never ordered more.

 

[OICAspork]

They were available for few weeks, then I guess even the stores realized what utter crap they were selling and never ordered more.

Well they are a step up from The Delta Chrome line. Take a look at the links to reviews on their websites. XD They only show reviews against things like 9550s and low end GFFXes along with Delta Chromes... with pictures of all the graphical screw ups on the Chromes.

 

[Mendel]

Well they are a step up from The Delta Chrome line.

Umm, well those two lineups were designed for totally different market segments though... and at least the chrome's graphics screwups weren't intentional... at least probably not.

Seriously though... what on earth are they doing? They mention this XG40 chip but is that going to be used in the "new" V8 and if so, what are the improvements to the previous V8? Why so vague?

 

[Xmas]

Seriously though... what on earth are they doing? They mention this XG40 chip but is that going to be used in the "new" V8 and if so, what are the improvements to the previous V8? Why so vague?

V8 was and still is XG40. The only thing that changed in their lineup is the V3XT, which is XG43 IIRC, based on XG40 architecture. The previous V3 is based on Trident's XP5.

 

[Fox5]

Bleh, I could understand when we heard about a company every once and a while making 3dfx cards, but does xgitech even have 1 aspect that is superior to nvidia or ati, at the very least in price point?

 

[Mendel]

well, they are superior in the shameless "optimizing"

 

[Lecram25]

This is XGI basically releasing their cards. The V3, V3Xt, V5, V8, and V5 Duo were never released. The only card that was "released" (note that there are probably a grand total of ~100 of these cards out there) was the Volari Duo V8; a pretty craptasic card I might add.

So yes, these are all based off of the XG40 core (except the V3 and V3XT, just like Xmas mentioned) and are nothing new. XGI is just extremely late and, well, dumb. They release these cards, but yet still the only Volari card available in the US are the crappy V3s (note the whole Volari line is crappy).

They were available for few weeks, then I guess even the stores realized what utter crap they were selling and never ordered more.

In a nutshell.

Bleh, I could understand when we heard about a company every once and a while making 3dfx cards, but does xgitech even have 1 aspect that is superior to nvidia or ati, at the very least in price point?

No, nein, non, zilch, none whatsoever.

XGI is nothing more than SiS' old graphics division with a name change and a little more money behind them (after SiS had to buy more shares so the company didn't drop dead; SiS now owns 30% os XGI); same staff, etc.

 

[vnet]

XGI is just extremely late and, well, dumb.

The title of the thread says it's Club3D who are relaunching the XG40, not XGI.

does xgitech even have 1 aspect that is superior to nvidia or ati, at the very least in price point?

HDTV?

XGI is nothing more than SiS' old graphics division with a name change and a little more money behind them (after SiS had to buy more shares so the company didn't drop dead; SiS now owns 30% os XGI); same staff, etc.

Then how do you explain that SiS only owns 30% of XGI as you claimed, since as you said yourself XGI comes from SiS' old graphics division?

 

[Fox5]

ATI has HDTV output for their cards(and some nvidia cards do too), plus there's the HDTV wonder if you want hdtv on your pc.

 

[Zaphod]

Then how do you explain that SiS only owns 30% of XGI as you claimed, since as you said yourself XGI comes from SiS' old graphics division?

Trident also got a 30% share in XGI in exchange for their graphics division. The rest was 'a cash infusion from outside investors' according to company press releases.

 

[Lecram25]

XGI is just extremely late and, well, dumb.

The title of the thread says it's Club3D who are relaunching the XG40, not XGI.

Umm, XGI also just announced the entire Volari range (minus the Duo, surprise surprise) not too long ago -> Sept. 27 2004.

XGI is nothing more than SiS' old graphics division with a name change and a little more money behind them (after SiS had to buy more shares so the company didn't drop dead; SiS now owns 30% os XGI); same staff, etc.

Then how do you explain that SiS only owns 30% of XGI as you claimed, since as you said yourself XGI comes from SiS' old graphics division?

*sigh*

SiS throws some money out to the Xabre graphics team to start up a company called XGI, which then becomes a subsidiary of SiS (SiS owns a percentage of the company. Company (XGI) becomes sucky and instead of bankruptcy, company (XGI) asks daddy for a little help. So SiS buys more shares and increases its ownership of the company, at the same time, keeping that company afloat.

Basically, this all started because of SiS' poor performance in the 3d hardware industry. So SiS believed that a "new" product (XG40 is nothing more than the XabreII) under a new name would help.

See, now was that hard?

 

[Fox5]

How is SiS's financial outlook doing? They don't seem to be doing too well in the motherboard market either.(athlon 64 is almost exclusively via and nvidia, and I think sis's share in the intel market is even smaller)

 

[Lecram25]

I don't know and I don't care.

 

[Putas]

SiS is timing their chipset strike when there is real 64 market.

And XGI arent that bad, as previous SiS graphics also werent that bad. The only problem is little publicity, as they dont have latest gratest, but can deliver amazing p/p ratio.

 

[karlotta]

SiS is timing their chipset strike when there is real 64 market.

And XGI arent that bad, as previous SiS graphics also werent that bad. The only problem is little publicity, as they dont have latest gratest, but can deliver amazing p/p ratio.

? not that bad for what? A desktop, wordpad? There abillity to have good drivers, to address game issues, or any cad/image program, is so lacking .... they are bad.

 

[Fox5]

SiS is timing their chipset strike when there is real 64 market.

And XGI arent that bad, as previous SiS graphics also werent that bad. The only problem is little publicity, as they dont have latest gratest, but can deliver amazing p/p ratio.

Sure, SiS is just waiting until the market is bigger before making money again?

And great price/performance ratio? XGI was selling its cards for as much as ati and nvidia cards, and they performed much worse and were very buggy. And as for SiS graphics...well I don't know how much they cost, but if they were integrated and thus free, or only cost $5 then I'm sure they had a very good price performance ratio, but it doesn't mean performance was good enough.