Volari screenshots

[digitalwanderer]

Where in the hell is the AA? Are these screens supposed to have any AA on them? If so it REALLY sucks!

Volari=DOA

Did you even read what I wrote ?

Here are some shots on Volari with Max Payne 2 (no AA, no AF)

Nope. I just joined in at the end of the thread and saw the screenshots scrolling threw and instantly thought, "EEEWWWW! Yuck, how ugly!", and posted the first thing that came to mind.

Sorry for that, I'll be quiet now.

 

[Ante P]

You show that the card does support trilinear unlike what many people suggest (as they always associate Volari with Xabre) and they say that "XGI is screwed for not having FSAA and AF".

Well aren't they screwed fornot havingany proper AA/AF support?

You show some screenshots and they accuse you of using some cheat by "keeping things within the first MIPmap borders and that you should flip the character by exactly 360 degrees face in order to face the whole yard". Once you do it, they say it is invalid as there are no comparison screenshots..

Well, when you post 6 consequtive screenshots all containing nothing but the first mipmap level I too get kindof suspicious.
And of course we need comparisons. Many people are happy with Intel Extremne Graphics until they see their games on a normal videocard and go "oh so that's what it's supposed to look like".

You show Volari's FSAA and they say "but we don't want Supersampling, we want Multisampling!"

Yeah well implementing SSAA in a board in this day and age is nothing but incompetent or plain lazy.

You show them screenshots of games perfectly working and they say "they could both be cases of the game being rendered in single digit FPS for all we know."

Which to must of usis a valid point since XGI has had grave problems with a handfull+ of games.

Seems that some people are so convinced that Volari must be bad that they always come up with some criticism.

The Volari boards are plain crap.
1. Poor compability/stability.
2. Loud fan noise.
3. Large ass boards.
4. Poor performance.
5. Poor DX9/PS2 support.
6. Expensive.
7. Cheats.
8. Only SSAA (without any exotic sample patterns)
9. Still no AF (and I personally doubt there ever will be unless the current LOD hacks are just meant as "placeholders")

I could go on for a page or two. But the simple fact is:
They offer worse performance, stability, compability, image quality and features than nVidias and ATis high endboards. Yet they still come at a price that's comparable to nVidias and ATis boards while even the fastest Volari has problems keeping up with 9600 XT/5700 Ultra in quite a few tests.

Let's flipit and instead you tell us what's so good about them compared to the equally priced products from ATi and/or nVidia.
To me, your XGI evangelism seems pretty fishy...

 

[Deathlike2]

Let's flipit and instead you tell us what's so good about them compared to the equally priced products from ATi and/or nVidia.
To me, your XGI evangelism seems pretty fishy...

Somehow, I'd think it would be some "NV PR" guy working for XGI.

 

[Ailuros]

Just as an aside, "Flipping a character exactly 360 degrees" will do jack shit. Considering 360 degrees is a full circle...

Good point and I apologize for the brainfart. I should have read 180 degrees.

On to the anti-PR crap:

Funny how everyone somehow come out with bad things against XGI.

I haven't seen any positives so far and neither you or anyone else so far was able to convince me of the opposite. WTF am I called to pay a high end price tag, when the V8 Duo has not a single compelling or competitive advantage over other sollutions? It's not even different with single chip sollutions; what's even worse is that the only thing they've managed is to steal from NV the cheating driver crown for 2003. More of that crap to follow.

First they say that no game works on XGI - you show them some screenshots of games and they say "guess just the fact that two titles work at all is celebration enough for XGI.."

Compatibility is even to date way lower than any normal tolerance level. Believe otherwise? You and the XGi employees (if you're not the one and the same) are probably alone.

You show that the card does support trilinear unlike what many people suggest (as they always associate Volari with Xabre) and they say that "XGI is screwed for not having FSAA and AF", even though reviews usually show image quality without FSAA or AF as well.

I haven't seen anything but a LOD trick for AF and a funky blur filter that's supposed to be SSAA so far. As far as texture filtering goes it's either dog slow which would be true trilinear, or quite a bit faster which wouldn't even be real bilinear in the end, rather just some funky dual bilinear approximation with horrendous blur smeared all over the scene. You might be blind, some of us aren't.

You show some screenshots and they accuse you of using some cheat by "keeping things within the first MIPmap borders and that you should flip the character by exactly 360 degrees face in order to face the whole yard". Once you do it, they say it is invalid as there are no comparison screenshots.

It should have read 180 degrees (Tangrineth was right). Well can I have a shot where Max is facing the yard, that obnoxious AA-blur filter enabled and a FRAPS framecounter posing in one corner of the scene? You've got nothing to hide do you?

You show Volari's FSAA and they say "but we don't want Supersampling, we want Multisampling!"

Again wherever so far the supposed SSAA on Volari was shown it indicated nothing else but an edge blur filter. You do know what impact real Super sampling even with an ordered sampling grid pattern has on an image do you? Let's see how often I'll get the horrendous 3dmark stone image. Here's material you can play with:

http://users.otenet.gr/~ailuros/4RGMS.jpg

DM-Rustatorium from UT2k3. Once we're there and see a shot with a framecounter on, then I can of course increase the resolution

You post decent framerate figures and they will say that the image quality is most likely horrible or that the person made up the benchmarks.

I seem to see ever repeating 20fps performance ratings and that even w/o AA/AF in a wide variety of tested games/applications. Depends under what conditions benchmarks are being run after all.

Sigh.
Seems that some people are so convinced that Volari must be bad that they always come up with some criticism.

No we aren't really prejudiced. There were some other accusations concerning you specifically, you might want to answer instead.

 

[incurable]

And of course we need comparisons. Many people are happy with Intel Extremne Graphics until they see their games on a normal videocard and go "oh so that's what it's supposed to look like".

For the sake of comparison, I installed MP2 on my testrig (P4 1.8A, 9600 XT) and the Volari shots seem to be all right at the first glance. If anyone's interested in comparison shots, I can post some later today.

Anyway, I wonder just how relevant the fact that Volari runs MP2 at whatever speed without AA and AF when a <150 Euro (delivered & inc. VAT) 9600 XT seems to run the game fine with both enabled. :?

cu

incurable

 

[karlotta]

If XGI was to offer the card at half the price and have a good software package, and also hire /double there driver dept. staff to "iron out " the issues with games....... ASAP!, then put together a OEM product, and have a 5 year plan to stay afloat... so said cards will be supported for 5 plus years....
then there would be hope.... XGI is in real trouble
Well ill buy one when frys has it for under 150$.

 

[incurable]

If anyone's interested in comparison shots, I can post some later today.

Ok, here they come:

and links some pics with both 6x AA and AF enabled:

configuration
Pic 1
Pic 2

cu

incurable

 

[xGL]

Anyway, I wonder just how relevant the fact that Volari runs MP2 at whatever speed without AA and AF when a <150 Euro (delivered & inc. VAT) 9600 XT seems to run the game fine with both enabled. :?

Good point. Too bad AF doesn't work in current drivers.
Actually, the screenshots were taken on the single chip Volari version which cost about that price too...

The name Volari is like GeforceFX or Radeon : it is a name for the whole family of products and not the name of a single product... There is the V8 Duo (double chip version which everyone has heard about which is expensive), but there is also a single chip V8 version, which is much cheaper, not to mention the V5 Duo and V5 single chip...

 

[digitalwanderer]

The name Volari is like GeforceFX or Radeon : it is a name for the whole family of products and not the name of a single product... There is the V8 Duo (double chip version which everyone has heard about which is expensive), but there is also a single chip V8 version, which is much cheaper, not to mention the V5 Duo and V5 single chip...

Are any of them any decent though? Or at least decent for the price? :|

 

[Lecram25]

The name Volari is like GeforceFX or Radeon : it is a name for the whole family of products and not the name of a single product... There is the V8 Duo (double chip version which everyone has heard about which is expensive), but there is also a single chip V8 version, which is much cheaper, not to mention the V5 Duo and V5 single chip...

Are any of them any decent though? Or at least decent for the price? :|

Well, if you think about it...remember seeing the V8 Duo performing like a 5600/9600 (or less), the V8 Ultra (single chip) performs the same exact way...XGI still doesn't seem to have their dual chip config setup properly...

 

[incurable]

Good point. Too bad AF doesn't work in current drivers.
Actually, the screenshots were taken on the single chip Volari version which cost about that price too...

How does it perform?

The name Volari is like GeforceFX or Radeon : it is a name for the whole family of products and not the name of a single product... There is the V8 Duo (double chip version which everyone has heard about which is expensive), but there is also a single chip V8 version, which is much cheaper, not to mention the V5 Duo and V5 single chip...

I know, but I haven't seen anything besides the infamous V8 Duo on sale, why should I consider the other announced members of the family as products? Will they ever go on sale? (or linger in the PR ether forever like the desktop Trident XP4)

cu

incurable

 

[StealthHawk]

Will they ever go on sale? (or linger in the PR ether forever like the desktop Trident XP4)

cu

incurable

VolariV3, the artist formerly known as the Trident XP4

 

[OpenGL guy]

Good point. Too bad AF doesn't work in current drivers.

Which is totally inexcusable. Changing filtering modes on a texture unit should be pretty straightforward (pretty much just change the FILTER field from bilinear to anisotropic). This sort of thing should be resolved long before the product is reviewed.

 

[Hyp-X]

Which is totally inexcusable. Changing filtering modes on a texture unit should be pretty straightforward (pretty much just change the FILTER field from bilinear to anisotropic). This sort of thing should be resolved long before the product is reviewed.

Unless the hardware is broken.
Remember the Parhelia - in the end they managed to make 2x AF sort-of working (with horrible bugs).
I'm pretty sure the hardware was originally designed for more than that - even the G400 had (working) 4x AF support.

Of course I don't know if it's a broken or a missing feature in the Volari.

 

[tEd]

Which is totally inexcusable. Changing filtering modes on a texture unit should be pretty straightforward (pretty much just change the FILTER field from bilinear to anisotropic). This sort of thing should be resolved long before the product is reviewed.

I'm pretty sure the hardware was originally designed for more than that - even the G400 had (working) 4x AF support.

i've never heard of that. Do you have some pics for proof?

 

[OpenGL guy]

Which is totally inexcusable. Changing filtering modes on a texture unit should be pretty straightforward (pretty much just change the FILTER field from bilinear to anisotropic). This sort of thing should be resolved long before the product is reviewed.

Unless the hardware is broken.
Remember the Parhelia - in the end they managed to make 2x AF sort-of working (with horrible bugs).
I'm pretty sure the hardware was originally designed for more than that - even the G400 had (working) 4x AF support.

Of course I don't know if it's a broken or a missing feature in the Volari.

Even if the HW is broken, that's still no excuse. That's what validation is about: You test things before you make the chip.

 

[Ailuros]

Good point. Too bad AF doesn't work in current drivers.

Which is totally inexcusable. Changing filtering modes on a texture unit should be pretty straightforward (pretty much just change the FILTER field from bilinear to anisotropic). This sort of thing should be resolved long before the product is reviewed.

Exactly.

 

[Ailuros]

HypX,

Remember the Parhelia - in the end they managed to make 2x AF sort-of working (with horrible bugs).

I'm not really aware why they limited Parhelia to only 2xAF, yet the original whitepapers spoke of 64-tap trilinear and 128-tap bilinear anisotropic if my memory serves me well.

Ok I just rechecked the feature whitepaper and it states the following:

64 Super Sample Texture Filtering

• Highest quality trilinear and anisotropic filtering
• Sustained performance
• Dynamic allocation of texture units
• 8-sample anisotropic and trilinear filtering on
4 dual-textured pixels/clock
• 16-sample anisotropic filtering on 4 single-textured
pixels/clock

 

[Xmas]

64 Super Sample Texture Filtering

? Highest quality trilinear and anisotropic filtering
? Sustained performance
? Dynamic allocation of texture units
? 8-sample anisotropic and trilinear filtering on
4 dual-textured pixels/clock
? 16-sample anisotropic filtering on 4 single-textured
pixels/clock

I believe what they mean with sample is actually single texels. So 16-sample anisotropic filtering is indeed only 4xAF bilinear or 2xAF trilinear.

 

[incurable]

VolariV3, the artist formerly known as the Trident XP4

Thanks for the reminder, totally forgot about that!

Anyway, has SiS / Trident / XGI ever demonstrated working anisotropic filtering on their hardware?

cu

incurable