Club 3D XGI Volari Duo V8 Ultra 256MB ddr2

erek

erek

[H]F Junkie
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Dec 19, 2005
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Elmy

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https://www.ebay.com/itm/1346558141...bAV6lbFvEyVOiAR1bzphwJWw==|tkp:Bk9SR6KM29GtYg
 
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I've always been intrigued by these XGI cards. Crazy that they attempted to take on nVidia and ATI back then.
 
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I really wanted to believe these guys were going to be a competitive third option 18 years ago, but the hardware was iffy and the software was dreadful, with drivers abandoned around 2006 or so with no post-XP drivers. This particular card is simply two chips connected by a modified motherboard northbridge with nowhere near the bandwidth to make SLI palatable... Just a mess.
 
No doubt. But I snagged a Volari V5 Ultra from my Micro Center in 2005 to replace a horrendous old 5200SE, and it couldn’t manage. Texture mipmap detail cheats and broken effects in Half-Life 2 with no performance advantage, Doom 3 ran in the ARB fallback compatibility mode, and despite advertising Windows 2000 support on the box it only installed in XP. I returned it about 24 hours later. Best part is they never opened specs for the 3D core, so in Linux it never managed better than 2D.
 
I remember when people were reviewing these and wanted one, just for the Duo part. A few more generations and they may have had something, was a decent effort at any rate.
 
I carried a little torch for them for a bit - even got offered the chance to beta test one of these abominations. I was trying to finish my undergrad, but oh, what (disappointment) could have been.
 
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These things when they came out, not quite making the promises of the Parhelia, were still some serious eyeball fodder.

Thanks erek for bringing me back a day or two in a better life/world (y)
 
I'd love to recap one of those cards. The vomit spectrum capacitors set my OCD off. Definitely not worth the $2000 price though, maybe one day I'll stumble upon one cheap.

Seriously, they use garbage United Chemi-Con (probably KZG or KZE) garbage right next to what look like high dollar Sanyo Polymer capacitors. Also looks like some Teapo-Cheapo on there as well.

It'd look amazing in all red Wurth capacitors.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
I'd love to recap one of those cards. The vomit spectrum capacitors set my OCD off. Definitely not worth the $2000 price though, maybe one day I'll stumble upon one cheap.

Seriously, they use garbage United Chemi-Con (probably KZG or KZE) garbage right next to what look like high dollar Sanyo Polymer capacitors. Also looks like some Teapo-Cheapo on there as well.

It'd look amazing in all red Wurth capacitors.
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It's a testament to XGI's half-assedness that they'd mix and match bargain bin components into the design of their flagship GPU. Just... wow.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
I'd love to recap one of those cards. The vomit spectrum capacitors set my OCD off. Definitely not worth the $2000 price though, maybe one day I'll stumble upon one cheap.

Seriously, they use garbage United Chemi-Con (probably KZG or KZE) garbage right next to what look like high dollar Sanyo Polymer capacitors. Also looks like some Teapo-Cheapo on there as well.

It'd look amazing in all red Wurth capacitors.
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Halon said:
It's a testament to XGI's half-assedness that they'd mix and match bargain bin components into the design of their flagship GPU. Just... wow.
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mines is in desperate need of recapping.. a plethora of them were bulging, possibly leaking even...

i felt at extreme risk to do my test in the video
 
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Yeah, not a great idea to use electronics with failed caps. They turn into resistors and pass DC current, putting heavy load on other things in circuit.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
Yeah, not a great idea to use electronics with failed caps. They turn into resistors and pass DC current, putting heavy load on other things in circuit.
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Those V8 Ultra GPU chips are getting rare too to be destroyed by that raw DC current

:(

1690683054168.jpeg
 
atp1916 said:
These things when they came out, not quite making the promises of the Parhelia, were still some serious eyeball fodder.

Thanks erek for bringing me back a day or two in a better life/world (y)
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Oh man, the Parhelia. With a hardware memory controller and improvement to their engineering tolerances they could have had a winner. As it was, the shader flexibility was ahead of GeForce3/4 but behind the Radeon 8500, and despite touting OpenGL 2.0 compliance there were some extensions that simply never worked correctly. I get the feeling it was a simpler problem to make it work for contemporary productivity and multimedia than the eclectic clusterfuck of gaming circa 2004. It managed Unreal and Source Engine games of the time pretty well (even managed Team Fortress 2 at launch, though probably not since the Hatpocalypse), but Doom 3 and Far Cry were both very iffy to nonfunctional. It can't be overstated how much the inefficient memory bandwidth hurt the card - it was a monster built on a 4x4 pipeline/TMU config, and literally couldn't keep the core fed. The derivative M-series PCIe cards with cut-down P650-ish variants of the core managed to punch up the Direct3D support enough to make WDDM drivers possible, but are still dog slow. Matrox has since moved on to opportunistically making products for their market niches based on GPUs from other vendors, and that's okay - the time since Parhelia suggests their time for making competitive parts was simply past them.

Oh. Right. XGI. Yeah, get that dude recapped ASAP and make sure the electrolytics aren't leaking, that'll flat out kill the card.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
Best get it recapped if you plan on keeping it working long term. The electrolyte is corrosive, if there's any on the board, it's going to start eating it.
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You would be willing to recap it?
 
Best estimate I can say is probably a few hundred. I charge time and materials, my rates haven't changed in a long time, but capacitors and shipping have gone through the roof.

Depending on what type of capacitors you want, it can be more or less expensive. If you just wanted normal quality electrolytics, it'd be cheaper. If you wanted higher quality polymer capacitors that last a lot longer, it'd be more expensive. Normal electrolytics can range from 15 cents to a bit over a dollar, depending on capacitance and voltage. Polymer caps are usually several dollars a piece.

I usually use polymers on video cards because of the heat, but it's whatever you prefer.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
Best estimate I can say is probably a few hundred. I charge time and materials, my rates haven't changed in a long time, but capacitors and shipping have gone through the roof.

Depending on what type of capacitors you want, it can be more or less expensive. If you just wanted normal quality electrolytics, it'd be cheaper. If you wanted higher quality polymer capacitors that last a lot longer, it'd be more expensive. Normal electrolytics can range from 15 cents to a bit over a dollar, depending on capacitance and voltage. Polymer caps are usually several dollars a piece.

I usually use polymers on video cards because of the heat, but it's whatever you prefer.
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The drill

https://videocardz.com/newz/when-drilling-is-the-only-option-extreme-radeon-rx-6900xt-repair
 
erek said:
The drill

https://videocardz.com/newz/when-drilling-is-the-only-option-extreme-radeon-rx-6900xt-repair
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Your card has turned out to be a monster with hidden problems. I'm having to consult with Razorwind because of RAM and mosfet issues.

Recapping the card alone took 12 hours, here's the result so far. I had to use three soldering irons, a hot air station and my desoldering station all at the same time to get many of the capacitors off the board. On top of using a 183C low melt solder to dilute the existing solder. This thing is like all power planes, it sinks heat like an iron skillet.
 

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GiGaBiTe said:
Your card has turned out to be a monster with hidden problems. I'm having to consult with Razorwind because of RAM and mosfet issues.

Recapping the card alone took 12 hours, here's the result so far. I had to use three soldering irons, a hot air station and my desoldering station all at the same time to get many of the capacitors off the board. On top of using a 183C low melt solder to dilute the existing solder. This thing is like all power planes, it sinks heat like an iron skillet.
Click to expand...

New caps in red look nice on that board.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
Your card has turned out to be a monster with hidden problems. I'm having to consult with Razorwind because of RAM and mosfet issues.

Recapping the card alone took 12 hours, here's the result so far. I had to use three soldering irons, a hot air station and my desoldering station all at the same time to get many of the capacitors off the board. On top of using a 183C low melt solder to dilute the existing solder. This thing is like all power planes, it sinks heat like an iron skillet.
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The card booted fine and ran doom 3

Heh


View: https://youtu.be/ji2CSmFakjo
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Your card has turned out to be a monster with hidden problems. I'm having to consult with Razorwind because of RAM and mosfet issues.

Recapping the card alone took 12 hours, here's the result so far. I had to use three soldering irons, a hot air station and my desoldering station all at the same time to get many of the capacitors off the board. On top of using a 183C low melt solder to dilute the existing solder. This thing is like all power planes, it sinks heat like an iron skillet.
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This recap seems at least semi-historic

Not aware of any of these cards being conserved

They very rare, I just happened upon an unprecedented source at one time through Elmy
 
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erek said:
The card booted fine and ran doom 3

Heh


View: https://youtu.be/ji2CSmFakjo
Click to expand...


With the number of failed capacitors, I honestly don't know how the card was even running. The problem I'm having right now is what I think are three SOIC-8 package mosfets(?) on the upper rear of the card under that small long heatsink are getting smoking hot. Like after just 5 seconds, they're 125C+.

Several capacitors in this area that I pulled off were either shorted, open or had turned into resistors, which may have broken the circuit and allowed the card to run in that state. Not sure how, I've seen stranger things. Right now, the card just displays garbage on powerup.

I'm having hell getting that heatsink off to try and figure out which of the three are running smoking hot, but the adhesive XGI used is insane. I've tried heat, freezing, cycling both rapidly with a tortional load from pliers and it still won't come off. I'm going to have to resort to using a razor to wedge between those mosfets and the heatsink to get it off.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
With the number of failed capacitors, I honestly don't know how the card was even running. The problem I'm having right now is what I think are three SOIC-8 package mosfets(?) on the upper rear of the card under that small long heatsink are getting smoking hot. Like after just 5 seconds, they're 125C+.

Several capacitors in this area that I pulled off were either shorted, open or had turned into resistors, which may have broken the circuit and allowed the card to run in that state. Not sure how, I've seen stranger things. Right now, the card just displays garbage on powerup.

I'm having hell getting that heatsink off to try and figure out which of the three are running smoking hot, but the adhesive XGI used is insane. I've tried heat, freezing, cycling both rapidly with a tortional load from pliers and it still won't come off. I'm going to have to resort to using a razor to wedge between those mosfets and the heatsink to get it off.
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Opinion on the video of it running?
 
The Doom3 video is from 5 years ago, and the brief powerup is from two years ago. Was the card powered up at all since then?

5 years of not being used is a long time for electronics, especially marginal capacitors. The caps could have still been good enough back then to have the card working.

I just pulled out two of my Socket 462 boards yesterday, they were put away working 4 years ago and don't boot at all now. The pile of things I have to fix never ends lol.
 
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