|
|
| XGI/Club3d Volari Duo V8 256mb | ||
|
Review: Stuart
"Veridian3"
Davidson
On 11/2 XGI released Reactor version 1.02.05 on their site. Considering the concerns we experienced with Reactor 1.0 and 1.01.51 we thought it may be interesting to see if they changed the Volari experience. As a reminder here is the test setup from the original review, which was also used for this update: REVIEW SETUP Software: ------------------------
A small increase in this new driver. No noticeable IQ changes.
Unreal Tournament 2003:
The benchmark results for Unreal Tournament show an increase of 2fps in botmatch. There was also a noticeable increase in IQ for the benchmark. The interference we noted in the original review is now gone and the benchmark completed a full run with no sections skipped. Unfortunately we were still able to see missing textures in actual gameplay with 1.02.05 (exact same places as the 1.01.51) and on some textures there were noticeable rolling lines. We also took the time to test some actual gameplay in UT2003. Reactor 1.02.05 – 1024x768
0xAA 0xAF As you can see, scores in actual gameplay are considerably different to the flyby and botmatch results. Whilst not unplayable there were some dips below and very close to the acceptable 25fps level. Max Payne 2 As with the older drivers attempting to run Max Payne 2 with 1.02.05 resulted in a crash on the Duo v8. We have spoken to Remedy and they have confirmed that this crash does not occur on the v8 single chip cards however they don’t have a Duo to test on. XGI had informed us that this bug was fixed in a newer driver when we originally reviewed the card. This appears not to have been the case. Need For Speed: Underground
1024x768 0xAA 0xAF Disapointingly in NFSU there was a drop in performance making the game even more unplayable. Prince Of Persia: The
Sands Of Time 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF Prince of Persia’s Color Diffusion bug from Reactor 1.01.51 has now been fixed. This makes the game playable without ini editing which is a bonus. The game is not really playable at 1024x768, 800x600 is more realistic. On the IQ front the game is about 30%-40% too bright by default on the Volari and requires some tinkering with the display settings to make it acceptable. Call Of Duty 1024x768
0xAA 0xAF The bug which caused COD to crash on the Volari during the training mission has been resolved in the new driver and the game is now playable. Reasonable scores for the card however the IQ is disappointing. The intro glitches are still evident and game appears to default to 16bit for many textures. Farcry Demo Farcry continues to crash during Precache
when attempting to run Farcry on the Volari V8 Duo. Breed Demo Breed gets as far as selecting single player then during the level load the game crashes to desktop. Halo v1.4 1024x768
0xAA 0xAF Halo did successfully run however there were major Image Quality concerns. Firstly despite selecting 1024x768 the resolution was clearly not correct and appeared more like 800x600. There were also major texture problems, no shading on water and low quality sky are 2 examples. Despite the reasonable average FPS figure the fps drops and IQ made the game completely unplayable on 1.02.05 X2: The Threat 1024x768
0xAA 0xAF X2 was almost playable at 1024x768 with shadows off in the game options. The menu screen objects were jerky however the game was less so. There were also some texture issues on both settings with meteors and ships etc displaying flickering textures. With shadows enabled the game was unplayable. Finally the game suffered from noticeable changes in texture quality. Instead of a gradual increase in detail as you approach objects there were jumps in IQ which only served to make the reduced quality all the more noticeable. RTCW: Enemy Territory 1024x768
0xAA 0xAF Disappointing figures again from the Volari, even in this game which uses a very old engine.Quite unplayable when out in the open.
Other Bugs: As with the 1.01.51 driver DVD playback is still overly bright. XGI informed us that this is due to a video setting being applied twice (once by the drivers and once by the playback software, in this case Power DVD 5). Disapointingly despite being aware of this bug weeks ago, and knowing the cause, XGI have yet to fix this. A new bug in 1.02.05 resulted in a desktop refresh being required after exiting many 3D applications. If you did not refresh the desktop (open a window on fullscreen for example) the desktop backdrop was not displayed and the refreshrate for the game and not the windows setting was used.
Other useful performance figures: MDolenc’s Fillrate Tester
- FFP - Pure fillrate - 1397.547852M pixels/sec
Shadermark 2.0
Painkiller Demo: No AA/AF: Very jerky, almost in slow motion to view.( Unplayable/unenjoyable basically) No major texture bugs seen. Only issue was that when changing the options in the game menu and clicking apply the card crashed and the system needed restarted. When restarted the options had been applied. UT2004 Demo: UT2004 Deathmatch UT2004 Assault UT2004 CTF
Conclusion
|
||
