According to XGI, Volari 8300 is targeted to multimedia PCs, and does not try to bring a great 3D performance. It is cheaper than its main competitors and yet brings a good performance on 3DMark03 (if we think about its price, of course) and a very interesting 3D performance on 3DMark05.

It has hardware-based DVD decoding. This is a great feature for entry-level PCs, because on computers without this feature it is the system CPU that decodes the DVD. If you don’t have a very powerful processor – as it is almost always the case when we think about very entry-level PCs – the CPU will be overloaded and will start dropping frames during DVD decoding. In other words, the CPU will be too busy that it will not decode everything, thus dropping video quality.

In our tests, with DVD decoding done by software (i.e., by the system CPU), CPU load was between 12% and 15%. Enabling DVD decoding to be done by hardware (i.e., by the video card), CPU load dropped to below 4%. We were using a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 and we could see this big difference in performance; in a more modest system the difference can be huge.

Also, keep in mind that if you have a GeForce 6200 you need to buy an extra piece of software to enable its DVD decoding that costs between USD 19.95 and USD 49.95, depending on the version (amazingly enough this same software was priced at only USD 15 not six months ago). Radeon X300 does not provide this feature. Radeon X1300 does, but this video card is quoted at the USD 100 range (for the 256 MB version, we couldn’t find the 128 MB for sale yet), double the price of Volari 8300.

So, Volari 8300 provides an honest 3D performance and a great DVD decoding done by hardware, meaning that you will have a terrific DVD playback even if you system has a very entry-level CPU. We think that this is a great product for multimedia PCs, and we think that more and more people are buying PCs to watch videos, download pictures from their digital cameras and to listen to MP3 files. For this purpose, we think Volari 8300 price is just right, and as far as we know it is the cheapest PCI Express video card available today.

We wish to congratulate XGI for finally understanding that pricing is everything on this market. Volari V8 chip, for example, provided a good mid-range performance when it was released, but it was quoted at the same price level of competing chips from ATI and nVidia. It is very hard for a newcomer to compete head-to-head with the leaders, even if you have the best product in the market. You should drop the price to gain market share. It seems that XGI has finally realized that.

The success of this product will depend a lot on XGI ability to deliver the message that this product is not intended to be a 3D gaming machine (even though it provides a reasonable 3D performance for its low price), and that what is really awesome on it is its DVD decoding feature, and that someone looking for this feature will pay half the price on a Volari 8300 than on a GeForce 6200 + DVD decoder software or on a Radeon X1300.

We must also remember that it is not a matter of installing this video card to have its hardware-based DVD decoding. You should configure your DVD player software to use this feature, which is not enabled by default. Let's hope XGI can make this very clear on its final product.

XGI’s Achilles Heel is availability. In the past they tried to find partners to manufacture video boards using their chips, but all video card manufacturers were too committed with nVidia and/or ATI and didn’t want to risk building XGI-based VGAs. Now XGI is selling their products under their own brand, let’s hope they have luck on distributing them.