XGI Technology

XGI Technology Inc. (Traditional Chinese: _zh. 圖誠科技) is based upon the old graphics division of SiS spun off as a separate company, and the graphics assets of Trident Microsystems.

History

In December of 2003, XGI announced the Volari Duo, a graphics card with two GPUs. This was seen as part of a potentially successful attempt to become competitive with ATI Technologies and Nvidia Corporation, which are the two largest GPU manufacturers in the world.

A few months after the announced release of XGI graphics cards were found by enthusiasts and hardware reviewers to be less than competitive with ATi and Nvidia cards. Some of the many performance and visualization problems were blamed on underdeveloped drivers. Even so XGI cards received good reviews in the low priced/low performance video card market: XGI Volari V3 cards were judged by some reviewers to be competitive and even superior to equally priced video cards that were on the market, such as a Nvidia GeForce MX 4000 card. Many reviewers though were pessimistic of the possibility that XGI would competitive in the 3D graphic card market.

On March 6, 2006, ATI Technologies announced the acquisition of Shanghai-based MacroSynergy, a fabless chip designer and XGI Technology alliance company, as well as related personnel working out of XGI Technology's Santa Clara, California location.

On 2006-10-17, RealVision Inc. announced forming technology alliance with XGI Technology Inc. [http://www.rvu-inc.com/news/pressrelease17-10-07E.pdf] On 2006-10-23, RealVision Inc. announced VREngine/XMD-Advanced series video cards [http://www.rvu-inc.com/news/pressrelease10-23-06E.pdf] , which uses the previously cancelled Volari 8300 (named Volari XG47), for use in medical imaging. Mass production would begin on 2007Q1.

Chipset table

Cards

Its line of graphics cards included:

Developed by SiS team

*Volari Duo
*Volari V8, V8 Ultra
*Volari V5, V5 Ultra
*Volari V3 XT
*Volari V3 XE, V5 XE
*Volari Z7
*Volari Z9, Z9sCancelled products
*Volari V5 XT
*Volari 8600, 8600 Mobile, 8600XT

Developed by Trident team

*Volari V3
*Volari XP5, XP5m32, XP5m64
*Volari 8300 - Although product page is no longer available, and production of video cards using it are cancelled, the chips were made into production models of RealVision XMD Advanced series video cards.
*Volari 8300 Mobile/Volari XP10 - Originally titled Volari 8300 Mobile, it was renamed to Volari XP10 when it was finally available. XP10 added LVDS transmitter.

Unidentified developer

*Volari Z11

References

*Olson, Sander (2003). Start-up graphics company could rival ATI and nVidia. Retrieved Dec. 13, 2003 from http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Dec/bch20031212023040.htm
*Volari Duo. Retrieved Dec. 13, 2003 from http://www.xgitech.com/products/products_2.asp?P=1
* [http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1611 Performance review of Volari V8]
* [http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/volari-duo/ Performance review of Volari V8 Duo]
* [http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=275&pgno=0 Performance review of Volari 8300]
* [http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=627&pid=2373 Performance review of Volari V3XT]

External links

* [http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/xgi-volari.html Club3D Volari Duo V8 Ultra Review]
* [http://www.xgitech.com/ XGI Technology Inc.]