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Amongst the thick haze of Geforce 6800 and Radeon X800 reviews published, it may appear rather difficult for those of you looking for an affordable graphics card to make the right choice. Let's face it, not everyone can afford to spend the equivalent of a months car payment on the latest and greatest graphics card just for a little extra eye candy. Also, those of you interested in Home Theater PCs (HTPC) don't need an uber card either. Today were going to stray a little from the rest of the pack and take a closer look at the recently released Chaintech Volari V3 card. Priced at about $47, this card certainly is one of the most affordable graphics cards you can find out there and is in the same price range as the nVidia Geforce MX 4000. However, unlike the Geforce MX 4000, the Volari V3 sports Vertex and Pixel Shaders support, the board has a DVI port and even more interesting, the Volari V3 seems to be the only card costing only $47 which supports HDTV up to 1080i ! Let's take a closer look at the card now. Basic Specifications:
Contents: The Chaintech Volari V3 card comes in a neat packaging :
One of the first points which struck me when examing the card is its size : the card is small, very small. The card is indeed built using a low profile form factor, which explains the small size of the card. Another noticeable point is the cooling system of the card : the card is totally fanless and only has a heatsink to cool the graphics processor, which makes the card totally silent. The GPU doesnt get all that hot anyway, so the heatsink is pretty much all you need. Even though it does not use any fan, the card was surprisingly cool, even after a long period of use. Here's a close-up picture of the card:
As we mentionned previously, the Chaintech Volari V3 is one of the rare cards priced under $50 featuring a DVI port. Of course, the card also features TV-Out and VGA ports.
The back of the card:
I half expected the card not to have any software bundled with it (other than the drivers) like other cards in the same price range. I was delighted to be proven wrong as Chaintech chose to bundle the card with the image editing software Adobe Photoshop Album. The card also comes with the usual cables, a manual and the drivers. Not bad at all for $47! Benchmarking: This is the system used for testing : We're not going too much into benchmarking here, just three to give you a general idea of how this card does. The graphics cards were run through the following set of benchmarks:
3D Mark 2003 I was going to benchmark Comanche 4, but I got erratic results, due to the fact that the MX4000 card is not DirectX 8 compliant whereas the Volari V3 supports DirectX 8 in hardware. This results in games automatically disactivating some 3D effects on the MX 4000 (such as water effects, shiny reflections, bump mapping, etc.) whereas the Volari V3 would run these games with the extra eye candy and therefore have more work to do than the MX 4000. To demonstrate the difference in image quality, below are two screenshots showing the difference between the two cards in water effects. Geforce MX 4000 - the water looks very plain and dull :
Volari V3 - notice the bump mapping effect on the water as well as the reflections of the trees on the water :
3DMark 03: 3DMark03 is the next generation of video benchmarks from FutureMark featuring "full DirectX9.0a support with completely new tests and graphics, 3DMark03 Pro continues the legacy of being the industry standard benchmark. The results are reported as unitless Marks, and the following are based on the graphics cards being set to a resolution of 1024x768, 32 Bit, 4x anisotropic filtering.
3D Mark 2003 clearly shows the superiority of the Chaintech Volari V3
over the Geforce MX 4000 : the Volari V3 scores 587 points whereas the Geforce
MX 4000 scores only 248 points. On short, the Volari V3 more than doubled the
results of the MX 4000. 3DMark 2001SE:
In 3D Mark 2001 SE, the Volari V3 slightly outperforms the MX 4000, even though the V3 has lower clock speeds. The Geforce MX 4000 also failed to run the Nature test, whereas we did not encounter such problems with the V3. Quake III: Quake III is a classic game benchmark. Though the game is a bit
dated, it still remains popular among gamers and this game still is one of the best ways of testing video and PC systems for any instabilities and best performance.
Interesting enough, the Volari V3 outperforms the Geforce MX 4000 by over 20 fps in Quake III, even though the V3 has lower clock speeds than the MX 4000. Doom III Now the question many of you must be wondering is : can the V3 play Doom III? Well, to my amazement, the answer is yes, although you may need to lower the resolution a little and set the Quality to Medium to play comfortably. Not bad at all for a card less than $50, especially since Doom III is very demanding.
Image Quality So far, we only looked at how the Volari V3 performed in games, but let's now take a closer look at how the card performs in 2D and videos. The image quality on the Chaintech Volari V3 is what we've come to expect from previous Chaintech products -- in one word, excellent. Actually, it was far better than the eVGA Geforce MX 4000 and also better than Chaintech's very own Geforce MX 4000. Along with hi-res HDTV support (up to 1080i), the Volari V3 has a video de-interlacing feature (beyond Bob-and-Weave) which is similar to ATi's "Video Immersion II" feature. This feature enhances video playback in a variety of ways, most noticeably by reducing the feathering and pixelation ("blockiness") that occurs in some videos. The result is much smoother looking videos, even when dealing with low quality videos. Movies were surprisingly crisp and bright on the Volari V3 and the colors were vibrant, not artificial. I popped in a couple of DVD movies and it played back just beautifully on the Volari V3. The clarity of the picture was excellent and I didnt see a single hickup regardless of how much action there was on screen. All in all, I was very impressed with the image quality of the V3. Conclusion: The Chaintech Volari V3 certainly is a very interesting piece of hardware. As expected from a card costing less than $50, the performance is not that great and hardcore gamers will need to look at cards costing well above $100 in order to satisfy their needs. That said, the Volari V3 certainly fared well and outperformed the Geforce MX 4000, both in terms of image quality and performance. It is actually through the feature set that the Volari V3 shines : hardware support for Pixel and Vertex Shaders, DVI port included, great DVD playback, support for HDTV resolutions up to 1080i, silent card, etc. As mentionned previously, the V3 is excellent for 2D and videos, in fact just as good if not better than cards costing more than twice as much. Its video streaming and DVD playback quality was very good indeed. Moreover, its DVI connecter makes it compatible with the newest monitors and its low profile format makes it a perfect fit for any case. Those of you interested in home theater PCs should definitely take a look at the Volari V3, especially since it has HDTV support. It also is a fantastic solution for those looking to upgrade from their integrated graphics. The V3 will not only give better performance, but also better image quality and free the system RAM that was used by the onboard video chip. It will definitely boost an older system. All in all, Chaintech has produced a very capable and competitive value offering with its XGI Volari V3 card. Customers who get graphics cards for entertainment PCs should be very satisfied with the Chaintech Volari V3. Definitely a good bargain considering its low price ($47).. Hopefully, we will soon see other Chaintech Volari board models arrive, such as the Volari V5 and V8.
Pros: Ratings Here are my ratings out of 10.
Excellent Product |
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Chipset: XGI Volari V3
