the v3 / v5 / v8 xgi volari are interesting cards (not powerful etc but still interesting). the z7 i believe is totally cut down so it could be embedded in blade servers for a minimal console, minimal screen mode bringup for windows installs etc.

http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/news/item … a243bf19435ab2f

Interesting. Does this imply theat the z7 specifically is 2D only? It doesn't specifically say it doesn't have 3d capabilities but it doesn't say it does either.

I'm interested if these cards have good DOS compatibility. If these have great image quality and don't show the problems that Matrox cards have in DOS then i would look into getting one.

Simple VBE 3.0 Cards for Industrial use, so no there is no need for 3d.

vbe9x driver should work fine with it.
http://www.navozhdeniye.narod.ru/vbe9x.htm

Once they come in I will run Phil's VGA benchmarks against them to see how they compare against the usual suspects. Looks like non-3D Accelerated Games is going to be the only use case. Image quality is sometimes in the eye beholder but I will let everyone know what I think.

So they came in today. First PC I tried one in was a Packard Bell P100 that I already had on the bench....I tried two of them and neither will post with the card. Not a good start.

So....these XGI Volari Z7 PCI cards don't work on any late 486 or early pentium systems i've tried. It does work on a Celeron 800 system I happened to have handy. I am guessing it has to do something with the PCI revision. The internet says it's 2.2 compliant which came out in 1998. So if I had to guess it would only work with Super Socket 7 boards and newer. Which sucks because if you are running SS7 or newer you would probably want a 3D card. Seems like I might have wasted my money on these guys. I'll load up dos on this Celeron 800 and see how it performs on Phils Benchmark and go from there. Hopefully their 2d DOS performance will be good enough putting them to some kind of use.

Rhuwyn wrote:

So....these XGI Volari Z7 PCI cards don't work on any late 486 or early pentium systems i've tried. It does work on a Celeron 800 system I happened to have handy. I am guessing it has to do something with the PCI revision. The internet says it's 2.2 compliant which came out in 1998. So if I had to guess it would only work with Super Socket 7 boards and newer. Which sucks because if you are running SS7 or newer you would probably want a 3D card. Seems like I might have wasted my money on these guys. I'll load up dos on this Celeron 800 and see how it performs on Phils Benchmark and go from there. Hopefully their 2d DOS performance will be good enough putting them to some kind of use.

Wouldn't a s370 VIA or Intel ES chip be a good combo with such a card?

Any news about how it performs in dos?

nforce4max wrote:

Any news about how it performs in dos?

Sorry I've been distracted between work and this big haul that I picked up Saturday which I've been discussing here. I think I hit the motherload today!

I promise I'll get it done.

So other then running Phil's Benchmarks he put together is there anything else you think I should run to gage DOS performance?

So right now I don't have a more DOS era system to test that will actually post with the Volari Z7 in it. So I took a spare hard drive installed DOS 6.22 on it and copied over Phils Benchmarks to it. The Celeron 800 I was going to use was giving me problems which I didn't have time to work out. Picked up a Compaq I had sitting in a pile and ran phils test with the hard drive i'd installed it to and compared the XGI Volari Z7 to the Before 2 MX 400 that was in the Compaq from the factory. Looks like it's no where near the performance of a Geforce 2 MX 400. I went ahead and put the entried in Phils database

After running the benchmarks I went and tested quake at other resolutions other then the default on just the Volari Z7. I would say 640x480 would be the highest playable resolution for quake. Once I get this K6-3 built that's been on my back burner I'll run the tests again. Is there anything else you want me to test? Or try and get working?

640x480 - 23.5
800x600 - 15.3
1024x768 - 5.4

Pentium 4 Northwood 1600 Pentium 4 Northwood-1600 Integrated FPU Modern 400 MHz 4x 1600 Mhz 0 341.4 142.81 523 211.6 695.81 Compaq 5423US None Intel Intel 845 v2.10 Defaults none 2 x 256MB PC2100 DDR AGP Geforce 2 MX 400 Nvidia Geforce 2 MX 400 64 MB MS-DOS 6.22 / HIMEM.SYS MTRRLFBE Rhuwyn VOGONS

Pentium 4 Northwood 1600 Pentium 4 Northwood-1600 Integrated FPU Modern 400 MHz 4x 1600 Mhz 0 141.7 76.06 982 113.6 331.36 Compaq 5423US None Intel Intel 845 v2.10 Defaults none 2 x 256MB PC2100 DDR PCI XGI Volari Z7 Nvidia Geforce 2 MX 400 64 MB MS-DOS 6.22 / HIMEM.SYS MTRRLFBE Rhuwyn VOGONS

Tetrium wrote:

Wouldn't a s370 VIA or Intel ES chip be a good combo with such a card?

Your probably right, but considering i've got 7 of these which are pretty much brand new I'm looking for as many uses as possible. I'm going to try it in as many "generations" of systems as I can.

Rhuwyn wrote:

Is there anything else you want me to test? Or try and get working?

does it support vbe v1? v2? what modes? (sorry, i cant see any screenshots at work, if this information is already supplied).

BloodyCactus wrote:

Rhuwyn wrote:

Is there anything else you want me to test? Or try and get working?

does it support vbe v1? v2? what modes? (sorry, i cant see any screenshots at work, if this information is already supplied).

How do I tell? Sorry I'm just returning to the hobby and it had been a long time since I messed with this stuff.

So I was able to try this on a few more systems. It looks these cards won't work in early to mid socket 7 systems, but they seem to work with most super socket 7 systems. Also, works on all the mid to late socket370 or slot1 system I've tried it on. I don't have any early slot1/s370 systems to test on.

So as stated before it does look like the really only viable purpose of this card is for 2D on systems Super Socket 7 or newer for dos gaming but not at high resolutions..... Or plain old non-gaming non-3d purposes. If I get a hold of an early P2/Celeron system (Pre 440BX) I'll try it on that but other then that don't think there is much else to say.

Also, On this Compaq 7470 I tested it on. (K6-2 533) The onboard Trident video. (I believe it's Blade 3D with 8MB shared memory from the system ram) Out benchmarked the Z7 on Phil's benchmarks. Doom realticks for Z7 was like 700 and the realticks for the Blade was more like 950. Quake was about even. Not sure why.

If anyone wants to be run any other particular benchmarks beyond Phils let me know.

is it a 3.3v or 5v pci card? I see its keyed for both. I wonder if older 5v systems cant handle it as well, being a dual 3.3/5v card.

BloodyCactus wrote:

is it a 3.3v or 5v pci card? I see its keyed for both. I wonder if older 5v systems cant handle it as well, being a dual 3.3/5v card.

According to this it is indeed both. You make a good point.

https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/Sound … r-Card~PCIVGAV7

So I don't know why I can't just let this go. But, I went through my stack of OEM towers and found a Compaq 5050 with the original Celeron Sticker so i checked it and it's a Celeron 333A with onboard Ati Rage LT.

Benched marked it with Phils benchmark suite. Then Installed the Z7. It works!!!...well now we know it will work with early slot processors at least. Benchmarked it. Performance is a good 10-20% higher with the onboard Ati Rage lt then it is with the Z7.

The moral of the story and summary of this thread is. The Z7 is outperformed by pretty much everything on platforms it is compatible with. Things that it presumable could outperform would generally be used on platforms which the Z7 is not compatible with.

Welp looks like I wasted my money on these. Anyone want one for the cost of postage? I've got 7 🙁.