XGI Info

nRollo

Banned
Jan 11, 2002
10,460
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XGI pulls from a deep reservoir of engineering and design talent stemming from its acquisitions of Trident Microsystems, and Silicon Integrated Systems? graphics divisions. Guided by industry veterans with a deep understanding of the worldwide graphics processor market

I know that Trident has always sucked on a scale way beneath even S3, and I assume Silicon Integrated Systems is SIS, so I'm guessing this will be pretty bad and have lots of hardware and driver issues.
It's possible veterans of these to bargain basement companies have invented something decent, but I'm not holding my breath.
 

bunnyfubbles

Lifer
Sep 3, 2001
12,248
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Didn't Trident have some wierd and radical idea to get major performance from minimal transistors; ie a budget card that was budget and actually packed a kick?

Personally I'm rooting for these guys to get somewhere but I'll also not put too much hope into it. There've been far too many "hopes" that have come and gone, either paper products that sounded too awesome to ever become true (and never did come true), or actual products that came to hardware and just couldn't hold out. Kyros... Xabers...
 

titanmiller

Platinum Member
Jan 5, 2003
2,123
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I'm fairly excited about this card, I dont plan on buying one but it is looking quite good and XGI's next card could be a serious contender as long as they keep up with the curve.
 

modedepe

Diamond Member
May 11, 2003
3,474
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Well is the drivers were decent and the price was right I'd definitely consider one.
 

Errors

Junior Member
Jul 16, 2003
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looks good but I'm fond of the old saying "no such thing as a free lunch"
2 GPU's... power requirements? HEAT???
 

bunnyfubbles

Lifer
Sep 3, 2001
12,248
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With the Volari Duo V8 performing around the same levels of a Radeon 9800 256MB on 3Dmark03 it is a bit dissapointing because it seems that they needed the dual GPUs in order to compete. But then again this is early product hardware and drivers, although I'd highly doubt XGI improving performance as drastically as ATI or nVidia could do if they were in the same boat. That and we probably won't see the card available until we see other refreshes such as the 9800XT so it might not ever stand out at all.

It'll also be really interesting to see the product in action in real world senarios and not just synthetic benchies. Could have a good lead over 9800/5900 in real games or on the flipside it could have a real lack. What really will be interesting to see is it's performance in a game such as HL2.

If their hardware isn't as incompatible with DX9 paths on HL2 as nVidia hardware is (hope that valve honostly did not "work with" ATI...) then it would be interesting to see the performance. If a single GPU V8 can possibly compare to a 5600/9600 and noting how well the 9600 does in HL2, a duo V8 could be promising considering how GPU hungry HL2 as memory bandwidth and efficient management thereof is seemingly ahead of the curve. But that's also another concern. ATI and nVidia have seemingly gone through great strides with being able to run games high res with AA and AF settings not just a dream. Who knows, the XGI's sheer bandwidth and/or bandwidth management might not be so hot.
 

PCboy

Senior member
Jul 9, 2001
847
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At last, the revival of dual GPUs. I miss the Rage Fury MAXX 128 Pro. How bout these apples? :) Hope this will be released to compete with the Volaris as well. Although, I agree with bunnyfubbles on his point, "With the Volari Duo V8 performing around the same levels of a Radeon 9800 256MB on 3Dmark03 it is a bit dissapointing because it seems that they needed the dual GPUs in order to compete."