Want to buy XGI Volari now?? Look here

[Raptor]

Well, it seems some volaris are already been sold at eBays. This one in Germany has 15 hours to go, and it's damn cheap!!! just 177 EU right now:
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2787656321&category=21889

There's another one on the US eBay, don't have the address right now, but it's a powercolor (yeah baby!!!) one, for 400$.

Both are volari duo v8 256 mb, I wonder how high the powercolor is clocked.

[NitroX infinity]

Ha! Way to much, you can get a Radeon 9800 128MB for 50 euro's more and for 50 euro's less you can get a Radeon 9600. There's probably also something around 177 euro available, and those are prices for new products.

Volari's don't perform well. Actually, they perform crap. They need two GPU's to even come close to the mid-ranged segment of the videocard market.

[lecram25]

/me wonders why it's being sold

:: rolls eyes ::

[mei]

Originally posted by Phalanx
Volari's don't perform well. Actually, they perform crap. They need two GPU's to even come close to the mid-ranged segment of the videocard market.

For people who raved about the Voodoo5 and still keep one, I'm surprised to hear such comments.
If I follow your logic, then the Voodoo5 was "crap" when it came out too (and even more now) as it did not managed to outperform the Geforce 2 GTS, let alone the Geforce2 Ultra or the Geforce2 Ti. Also, it had terrible image quality (no trilinear!), only its FSAA could make up for image quality.
Talk about being biased.

The Volari actually blows away the 9600XT.

[NitroX infinity]

That's different. 3dfx was already an established company and had been the market leader for quite some time. XGI on the other hand is a new player in the market. As a new company you should deliver a product that can approach the highest levels of performance otherwise people won't notice you. It's pretty clear with XGI, they didn't even make a dent in the market, at most they made a small scratch.

[mei]

So you mean that releasing a crap card is excusable and worthy to be praised all because the company was "an established company who had been a market leader"? Talk about leaving in the past...

Also, the only time 3dfx had been a market leader was at the days of the Voodoo2. Everything afterwards were crap. The Banshee was crap, the Voodoo3 was crap (no stencil, 32 bit, etc.), the Voodoo4&5 were crap, and the 6000 was too.

[FalconFly]

*lol*

The Voodoo3 was a very competitive Card, excellent 16bit performance (at ~22bit Quality thanks to the unique POST-Filter), and Glide compatibility.

I've seen the TNT's and TNT2's suffer, with their owners frantically trying to play Unreal Tournament at acceptable performance (and with inferior Image Quality at the same time)...

32bit ?
At that time no Card had the performance to make real use of it; 32bit Rendering was a marketing hoax roughly until the TNT2 Ultra's appeared. (at that time, it finally allowed for slightly better Image Quality vs. 22bit 3dfx rendering, but at the price of much lower performance )

Stencil Buffers ?
The only time I have ever seen a TNT class Card make any real use of it, was after Creative releasing their "Stencil Shadows for Unreal 1" Patch.
After that, pretty much nothing was ever heard of that feature again (although it looked very good).

What's your next argument, Hardware T&L at that time ?
...seen that in action from GeForce2MX Users; their Athlon 900MHz was able to perform Software T&L 3 times faster than the GPU's Hardware T&L (and 3D Mark 2000 being the only "Game" available to see it in Action at that time *lol* )

...nothing but marketing hoaxes those days, but the Magazines fell for it, the Users fell for it. But in Games, the Voodoo's simply often looked and played better.
(During LAN Patries, everytime I've had people come to my Monitor to witness the Visual Quality; many GeForce owners asked me why the Images on my Screen looked so much better and more vidid, and what Card I had. My answer : 3dfx Voodoo5 5500. I had to do alot of tweaking on their machines to make their GeForces run better; faster it usually was in the end, but never looked as good)

The PowerVR Kyro2 was (surprisingly) the only competitor those days, that had the same (if not a tad better) Image Quality and equal or slightly higher performance; really an excellent piece of Hardware...
---------------------
About the Release of the Voodoo4/5 I must partly agree, did not fully live up to their expectations at the delayed time they were released. But that's plain old history, the rest we know...
Still, they had unbeatable advantages, if only put to the right use by someone who knew what he was doing

[Voodoo5]

@mei,

For people who raved about the Voodoo5 and still keep one, I'm surprised to hear such comments.
If I follow your logic, then the Voodoo5 was "crap" when it came out too (and even more now) as it did not managed to outperform the Geforce 2 GTS, let alone the Geforce2 Ultra or the Geforce2 Ti. Also, it had terrible image quality (no trilinear!), only its FSAA could make up for image quality.
Talk about being biased.

Terrible image quality ?, are you f**cking nuts

When the VSA-100 cards were finally released by 3dfx (albeit late), no doubt they were slighty behind Nvidia's top cards in pure fps performance but they were vastly superior in image quality when set-up correctly.

3dfx has to be given full credit for being the first graphic card company to introduce amazing FSAA that for years after its release was not surpassed.

Sorry to say but this statement is ridiculous and incorrect

Here's but one of 100's of articles/reviews I have read proving your statement/opinion to be laughably false:

http://www.papadoc.net/V5vsGF3.html

Also note that the comparison in the article is against a geforce 3, which Nvidia was marketing/hyping as if it were like the second coming of christ.

[amp_man]

Also, the only time 3dfx had been a market leader was at the days of the Voodoo2.

lmfao, in order to prove that dual GPU cards suck, you quite the VOODOO 2??? Dude, what made the Voodoo 2 such a kickass card was the fact that you could SLI two of them together to get a wee bit more power, and higher resolutions. What was that dual GPU crack again?

What's your next argument, Hardware T&L at that time ?
...seen that in action from GeForce2MX Users; their Athlon 900MHz was able to perform Software T&L 3 times faster than the GPU's Hardware T&L (and 3D Mark 2000 being the only "Game" available to see it in Action at that time *lol* )

I have actually run a few tests on a GeForce2 GTS and found that even with my AXP 1800+ (1.53GHz), the ancient hardware TnL engine is still faster than software TnL (this may be different with a GF2MX, but we're trying to compare two top-end cards, of the time). I ran a few different benches, but the main one I can remember was 3D Mark 2001, with hardware TnL, I got about 4k marks, with sw TnL, I saw closer to 3k. I used 3D analyzer on a couple games, too, but I can't remember the FPS (or even games) off the top of my head.

[FalconFly]

Yes, the GeForce2 GTS was among the first Cards that had a powerful enough T&L Unit to become somewhat useful (compared to Software T&L).

But 3D Mark 2001 still being about the only "Game" that supported it at its time, albeit of limited usefulness... What made this Card a success, was its raw Bandwidth.

[agrelaphon]

If Banshee was a crap, then why did it sell over 1 million cards?

And Falconfly is right; voodoo3 WAS a competitive card. I've been an owner of both a V3 and a TNT2 and there is no doubt that the V3 was more of a "gamer" card than the TNT. Both cards can't perform decent now, but the old games that they played well, voodoo3 played them better.
Just seeing it with UT (at the time) was enough to buy it. (It worked on me).
Voodoo5 was a bit of a dissapointment though (a DX6 card). I remember people saying: "so now it takes 2 chips for the "powerfull" 3dfx to reach nvidia".
I think 3dfx rushed into selling out. Where was ATI when they released THE failure (fury maxx)? They didn't sell but waited and got at the top[8]

[mei]

Originally posted by agrelaphon
If Banshee was a crap, then why did it sell over 1 million cards?

Because 3dfx was an established company and people buy anything with the 3dfx label on it, simple as that.
Banshee was in all case worse than a Voodoo2, let alone the Voodoo2 SLI, and the Banshee did NOT support multitexturing, even though 3dfx patented multitexturing. Result? Many games don't work on Banshee whereas they run on Voodoo2.

I don't understand why many of you are so hard on XGI : they are new in the market, they have very little experience and limited resources.
You cannot honestly expect a new company with 300 employees to outperform in one blow a company with over 2700 employees...

And let's not forget that even ATI and nVidia released poor performing cards : the ATI Rage Fury Maxx was crap and the nVidia Riva 128 had the market's worse image quality.

[FalconFly]

Agreed, XGI definitely needs a chance to establish itself.

However...
I sure wish they would have supplied Ear Plugs together with their Volari Duo V8 Ultra.

The noise level of that beast is a full-blown (yet completely unnecessary) catastrophy

[dborca]

ohwell, i can't help myself.

Originally posted by mei

Also, the only time 3dfx had been a market leader was at the days of the Voodoo2.

completely agree!

Originally posted by mei

If I follow your logic, then the Voodoo5 was "crap" when it came out too (and even more now) as it did not managed to outperform the Geforce 2 GTS, let alone the Geforce2 Ultra or the Geforce2 Ti. Also, it had terrible image quality (no trilinear!),

i really hate when people speak about things they don't know. all voodoos (yes, ALL) could handle trilinear (be it single-pass or two-pass) - with some sacrifices, admittedly. Mesa proved this back in 1999 or something. okay, 3dfx' drivers used to suck, but hey, so are xgi's. and while being at "image quality", you do know about xgi's blurryvision(tm), now don't you?

[patience]

About the Banshee, nice to read again the old news (when always online)

http://www.guru3d.com/review/MagicTwinPower.html
http://www.guru3d.com/review/GA-630.html

or

Hardgame has done a review of the Guillemot Maxi Gamer Phoenix (Banshee) card.  As usual, they have done a great job with lots of benchmarks and screenshots.  Here is a bit from it :
Without a doubt the 3Dfx Banshee is a 2D/3D chip to be reckoned with and made me forget all about the Rush fiasco. The Phoenix Banshee gives you the power of a Voodoo2 at an incredibly low price point. Including Half-Life: Day One in the game bundle was a great move and with 16 MB of memory, you'll be set for the next wave of 3D games to hit the market. This is not one of those cheap cards that are obsolete the minute you buy them. While the Phoenix is certainly an impressive 2D/3D card, the performance hit in multi-texture games and the 16-bit color limit are also potential issues that you should weigh. Even with those aspects in mind, I can't help but think 3Dfx and Guillemot have really got a winner here, and I think it's high time that more gamers experience exactly what has made the 3Dfx name so special.

But/And the Card was sold...

Anyway let's give to XGI and S3 some time ; the market needs more competitors.

edit : @Mei

The Banshee was crap, the Voodoo3 was crap (no stencil, 32 bit, etc.), the Voodoo4&5 were crap, and the 6000 was too.

Interesting viewpoint ( but i doubt that you had a 3dfx card in your machine now.
About the last generation (the VSA 100), probably already too many problems inside 3dfx and unluckily.
But thanks to the some prototypes and specimens cards found (and for many of among them, capable of running), a future has been envisaged.
But all that is history now.

Anyway, even if this topic is about XGI, don't forgot S3 and the DeltaChrome ; this card is probably better than some people think about it.