3DMark2001 SE measures video card performance simulating DirectX 8.1 games. It is very effective software for evaluating the performance from previous-generation games, programmed using DirectX 8. In this software we ran two tests, both at 1024x768x32. Since we were evaluating low-end video cards, we decided to not run our tests in higher resolutions, since rarely a user that buys a video card from this level will push resolutions above 1024x768 in 3D games.

We ran this software without antialiasing and with no frame buffer. Unfortunately Volari 8300 does not support antialiasing, so we couldn't compare it to other video cards enabling 3D video quality enhancements.

You may be asking yourself why we added an old program in a review of a latest generation video card. To us, it is as important to know the performance of a video card with the latest games as it is to know its performance in an older game. That’s why we kept this software in our methodology.

At the default 3DMark2001 SE configuration, XGI Volari 8300 128 MB was betean by Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit (ATI), which was 176.58% faster, GeForce 6600 128 MB (Albatron), which was 139.11% faster, GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB (nVidia), which was 132.17% faster, GeForce 6200 128 MB 128-bit (Leadtek), which was 122.92% faster, GeForce 6200 TC 64 MB 64-bit (XFX), which was 64.64% faster, Radeon X300 SE HM 128 MB 64-bit (PowerColor), which was 32.42% faster, Radeon X300 128 MB 128-bit (ATI), which was 32.33% faster, % faster,
GeForce 6200 TC 16 MB 64-bit (Leadtek), which was 26.93% faster and i915G (Intel D915GEV), which was 7.82% faster.