Review: Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson
Editor/Design: Allan "Zardon" Campbell

 

Image Quality

The image quality of the Volari was always lacking when compared to ATI or Nvidias. Whilst it was not un-useable or unacceptable the standard was just poorer in all aspects.

Here is a selection of images produced by the card in out benchmarks and from DVD playback. (All 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF unless stated). Unfortunately we were unable to capture any screenshots from COD as each one was distorted compared to the onscreen image.

 

DVD Image Screenshots

Halloween and Star Wars Episode 2: The captured screens appear fine however the actual playback of the DVD’s was not as good. Whilst some output from the card was darker than expected (3dMark03 GameTest2) DVD’s suffered badly when there was a bright colour on screen. The bloom created by it made the images unwatchable. Amending the gamma/colour settings did help however the images were still not correct.

 

Things of note:

Max Payne 2: Banding in darker areas.
3Dmark03: Trolls eyes are not displaying correctly, generally the quality of the trolls is not up to standard.
Unreal Tournament: Metal textures are not defined clearly. In the screenshot with the red circles those areas were just grey blocks when playing however were fixed by the screenshot.

All images are available for download as lossless BMP in a self extractring RAR, available here (9.6meg)

IQ in with AA/AF
In our screenshots (download file above) with 4xAA and 4xAF enabled it is clear to see that there are still very prominent jagged lines on the plane wings. This will level of quality will continue across any game/application as the Volari is only capable of a max of 4xAA/AF. Additionally the display quality when these settings are enabled is somewhat reduced as the image becomes much more blurry/soft.

 

Game Image Screenshots

 

 

Next: V Drive/Overclocking

 

 

Select 1. Volari 2. The Drivers 3. Test Setup 4. 3dmark 2001/2003 5. Aquamark 3 6. UT2003 7. Max Payne 2 8. Need For Speed Underground 9. Prince Of Persia 10. Call Of Duty 11. Farcry Demo 12. Image Quality 13. V Drive/Overclocking 14. Conclusion 15. Update Reactor 1.02.05