Benchmarking:

We are going to test both Windows and D3D environments for a period of time and get an average ever day feel for the performance and capabilities of the Volari V8. For stress testing purposes we are going to use driver version 1.08 WHQL with an over-clock on the engine and memory timings which will be set at 300MHz - 320MHz respectively.

Let's start with the DirectX9 benchmarks, Aquamark3 can stress any video card out there right now with its complex effects. AquaMark3 is a powerful tool to determine reliable information about the gaming performance of a computer system.

FSB x (14.0)	VPU - RAM Clock	Aquamark 3 Score
200 MHz	300MHz/300MHz	25,242
200 MHz	320MHz/320MHz	26,874

The XGI Volari V8 sets some decent scores in Aquamark3. If we compare these to some of it's competitors then surely the Volari V8 can stand the heat. Though, we saw a few image and texture quality issues with parts of the benchmark. But this is related more to the XGI drivers then to the card itself. Overclocking the card gave us a nice performance increase, which certainly proves the card responds well to the increase in clock timings.

The next benchmark we ran, is the popular suite from Futuremark. We ran the 2 latest version of 3DMark, namely 3DMark03 and 3DMark05. Where 3DMark03 is clearly a more DirectX8/DirectX9 combined benchmark suite, 3DMark05 is only featuring DirectX9 algorithms.

FSB x (14.0)	VPU - RAM Clock	3DMark03 Score
200 MHz	300MHz/300MHz	2397
200 MHz	320MHz/320MHz	2514

Again the Volari V8 puts down some good numbers in his category. On our Intel based system the Volari V8 did run well throughout the benchmark.

FSB x (14.0)	VPU - RAM Clock	3DMark05 Score
200 MHz	300MHz/300MHz	669
200 MHz	320MHz/320MHz	746

So what about 3DMark05? As this is a more intensive benchmark on the graphics card we see that the results have gone down. However this doesn't mean it isn't performing well. But since the focus is on DirectX9, the Volari V8 struggles keeping up the performance. We get similar results from other cards in the same class which lack a bit the full support of DirectX9.