XGI Volari 8300 Graphics Card

The new XGI Volari 8300 has all the makings of a good entry-level card with its minimalist approach to everything. Cost should be very low, thanks to its simple PCB design, narrow memory interface and support for only cheap DDR memory.

XGI is targeting this card, not at 3D graphics enthusiasts, but rather at the home entertainment market. Hence, they are touting the Volari 8300's superior DVD playback quality and its ability to run without a fan for total silence. Those would be significant advantages for users who are looking for a cheap graphics card to power their home entertainment PCs.

Of course, the actual card, as we have seen, comes with a small fan. We wonder if the Volari 8300 could actually work well without a fan. Still, the acoustic impact of the fan should be very minimal. It really is a very small fan.

As far as its performance in 3D graphics is concerned, it's definitely NOT a selling point. You can just barely play games like Doom 3 if you use only the lowest resolutions and graphics details. Playing graphics-intensive games like F.E.A.R., unfortunately, are out of the question.

Its only saving grace, as far as graphics is concerned, is its DVD playback quality. As XGI claimed, it is truly superior to what NVIDIA and ATI can offer. Even expensive cards like the GeForce 6800 GT had comparatively poorer anti-aliasing. On the other hand, we did note some jerkiness, which may detract from its anti-aliasing quality.

In conclusion, the XGI Volari 8300 will best serve as a cheap graphics card for use in entry-level HTPCs where its comparatively superior anti-aliasing will be an advantage. It will also work great for business PCs, especially if the price is really low. But if you intend to play 3D graphics-intensive games, even low-end cards like the ATI Radeon X300 are far superior solutions.

For more details, read our Comprehensive Review!

MSRP

• NA

Lowest PriceGrabber Price

• NA

Review

• Comprehensive Review

Architecture

• NA

Manufacturing Process

• 0.13 Micron

Transistor Count

• NA

DirectX Support

• 9.0b

Interface

• PCI Express

Vertex Pipelines

• 2

Vertex Shader Version

• 2.0 Extended

Pixel / Texture Pipelines

• 8 x 2

Pixel Shader Version

• 2.0 Extended

Core Speed

• 300 MHz

Fill Rate

• 4800 MTexels/s

Memory Bus Width

• 64-bits

Memory Type

• DDR

Memory Speed

• 350 MHz (700 MHz DDR)

Memory Bandwidth

• 5.6 GB/s

TruShader™ SE Graphics Engine

• Hierarchical pixel tiling for page based rendering
• 2x2 pixel pipelines and 4 independent Pixel Shaders
• 2 pixels/clock with 8 texel/pixel
• Texture size up to 8Kx8K and non-power of 2
• Bi-linear, tri-linear and anisotropic texture filtering
• High order texture filtering up to 8x8 kernel
• Linear sRGB color format
• MET and MRT
• Floating color buffer (up to 32 bit)
• Floating texture formats (up to 32 bit)
• Full anti-aliasing support for texts, lines, scenes
• Special multi-resolution depth buffer
• Special bandwidth reduction hardware via compression
• Multi-level caches
• Fully OpenGL-compliant blending including fog & depth cueing

CoolPower™ II

• Unified software & hardware architecture for power management
• Dynamic clock gating, frequency scaling, work load balancing
• Supports INTEL-defined Device Performance States (DPS)
• Supports PCI Express Active State Power Management (ASPM)
• Optional battery optimizer under user control

TrueVideo™ Engine

• State-of-the-art pixel based motion and edge adaptive de-interlace
• Inverse 3:2 pull down
• Motion and object based adaptive edge smoothing
• Overdrive technology for Ultra Clear TFT LCD image quality
• Supports HDTV resolution up to 1280x720p
• Provides cubical interpolation with edge recovery

Output Displays

• Three simultaneous outputs: CRT, DVI and TV out
• Integrated TMDS for interface to DVI up to 1600x1200
• Integrated NTSC/PAL encoder up to 1024x768
• 350 MHz RAMDAC for CRT up to 2048x1536
• 90° and 180° HW rotation support

Graphics Standards

• MICROSOFT® graphics standard for Windows® XP and 2000
• DX9.0 Vertex Shader 2.0 Extended and Pixel Shader 2.0
• DX9.0c software compatible
• OpenGL 1.5 compatible