Volari video cards

[perdomot]

Newegg has the V8 card for about $60 and according to rojakpot.com, the card has some nice tech specs but I havent seen any mentions of the card being used by posters. Thinking of putting this in my second rig since it doesnt get used for gaming and I'm tired of the 9200's poor performance that's currently in there. Any opinions?

 

[cubby1223]

All the initial reviews showed Volari cards were woefully terrible, bad drivers, bad architectures, terrible image quality.

They just kinda fell off the map - nVidia & ATi kept their developments up, so there was never a need to look back.

For $60, I'd think you could find a 9600 somewhere.

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
All the initial reviews showed Volari cards were woefully terrible, bad drivers, bad architectures, terrible image quality.

They just kinda fell off the map - nVidia & ATi kept their developments up, so there was never a need to look back.

For $60, I'd think you could find a 9600 somewhere.

Maybe even a geforce 6200.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
All the initial reviews showed Volari cards were woefully terrible, bad drivers, bad architectures, terrible image quality.

They just kinda fell off the map - nVidia & ATi kept their developments up, so there was never a need to look back.

For $60, I'd think you could find a 9600 somewhere.

Initial reviews of the Duo maybe. Have you ever used a non-Duo Volari? They work just fine. I used to have a 128MB V3. It was great for a basic display/standalone card for $35, and the image quality is just as good as a Geforce/Radeon card. Played some games...HL2 at low settings not that well, Doom 3 not at all, but I had no issues with the card. A V8 is basically on par with a Radeon 9600 in terms of speed, to give you an idea.

 

[v8envy]

Doesn't seem worthy of the risk. If it was $30, sure. But $60 is close enough to the price of a 9600 or 9800SE that it's worth going with ATI simply because ATI has the resources to keep supporting the card with newer drivers.

The upgrade from a 9250 to a 9600Pro (or even 9550) is a HUGE leap forward. While you won't be gaming like a modern man, at least you'll be gaming!

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: Avalon
Initial reviews of the Duo maybe. Have you ever used a non-Duo Volari? They work just fine.

I was more-then-less just describing to the OP why he doesn't see any Volari's used around here (excluding yours, of course), or really in many tech reviews around the net.

 

[perdomot]

Well, the vid card guide shows a difference between my 9200 at 1000 MTexels and the 9600PRO at 1600 MTexels which doesnt sound like a huge leap forward. Are there other factors to take into account?

 

[v8envy]

Originally posted by: perdomot
Well, the vid card guide shows a difference between my 9200 at 1000 MTexels and the 9600PRO at 1600 MTexels which doesnt sound like a huge leap forward. Are there other factors to take into account?

Same 1.6x performance difference for shader ops and pixel fill rate. Also a difference of 6.4 Gb/sec to 9.6 Gb/sec memory bandwidth.

A 60% difference in processing power doesn't sound like much, until you realize it's the difference between 20 frames/sec and 35 frames/sec. One is a borderline slideshow, and the other is borderline playable.

Neither one is going to be good enough for modern games. Realize that people are finding the 9800 Pro inadequate today, and that card has 2x the performance of the 9600Pro. So if THAT card is providing 10-15 frames/sec, well, yours is comprable to holding down the printscreen button and playing by looking at what comes out of your printer.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: perdomot
Well, the vid card guide shows a difference between my 9200 at 1000 MTexels and the 9600PRO at 1600 MTexels which doesnt sound like a huge leap forward. Are there other factors to take into account?

memory bandwidth and shader model 2

 

[perdomot]

Perhaps I should get a mobo with intergrated graphics instead. I was looking at the new Geforce 6100 series but am not sure how it compares to a 9600PRO. Xbitlabs has a review here but I dont know how to interpret the numbers:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/chipsets/display/gf6150-gf6100_12.html
Can anyone tell me if this IGP solution would perform better than a 9600PRO? The price appears comparable. Thanks.

 

[IlllI]

edit: this may have been what i read

 

[v8envy]

The 6150 won't come anywhere near the performance of the 1600. Depending on the game, it could be imperceptibly worse or better than your 9200. Even a 10% performance difference translates to 1-2 frames/sec at that level.

The 9600 is about the lowest, utter bare minimum for running modern games. The volari may also be acceptable, but who knows re: quality of drivers and their compatibility with all games.

Let's look at 3dmark05 numbers. That article quotes 700 3dmark05s for the 6150. This translates into 18.6 frames/sec in far cry at 800x600, and 12.6 frames/sec in doom3 at 800x600.

Unfortunately the 9200 won't even run 3dmark05, and is too old of an extreme budget card to be reviewed with new games like far cry and doom3. Most enthusiast sites only review the extreme budget cards when they are new, they correctly figure 15 frames/sec at 800x600 in modern games results are interesting to no one.

Anyway, the 9600Pro pulls about 1800 3dmark05s, so you can see how it's got significantly more oomph than the onboard card. The 3dmark scores won't perfectly translate to to a doubling of frame rates in games, but I've come across people claiming 25-32 frames/sec in far cry, and hardocp had the card pulling 32 frames/sec at 1024x768 in doom3. So 3dmark05, for all its faults, is an okay indicator of relative performance.

To give you an idea, 6600GT and X800 class cards pull between 3500 and 6000 3dmark05s. These are now considered minimal for acceptable gameplay with today's games. Less than 3000 3dmark05s is only suitable for playing bargain bin games from 2000-2003.