ATi's New All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 128MB

KillaBee writes "ATi has taken the wraps off their latest addition to their 'All In Wonder' product line of graphics cards with TV and video editing functionality. The All In Wonder Radeon 8500 128MB card, reviewed here, has ATi's fastest Radeon 8500 core along with a full 128MB of 300MHz DDR SDRAM (600MHz DDR). This is ATi's 'Swiss Army Knife' card that brings with it very competitive 3D graphics performance as well."

Comments

ANOTHER duplicate story!??

[ThomasKregaard]

We seem to have gotten quite a lot of these lately, dear editors...

Not a duplicate!

[Anonymous Coward]

The last All-in-Wonder story was about the stripped-down cheapo extra-good-value AIW. This story is about the 128MB beefed-up version.

Re:Don't buy it! Drivers STINK

[bonzoesc]

What, ATI's annual driver release not good? Say it isn't so!

...

Wait a second, this is ATI we're talking about. They're even worse than Creative with drivers, I swear. There was a time when I had to switch between three sets of ATI drivers for Half-Life, UT, and Quake 3, each switch requiring two 3-minute reboots in Windows 98.

The only way to use the TV functions on any ATI card is with an external program. I recommend DScaler, which does some fancy processing to the signal to make it look good enough to eat (unless it's squid day on Iron Chef).

Re:PCI?

[Gizzmonic]

t's Spring, and the need for a new video card presents itself. Why? Because the one you bought 6 months ago is "outdated," meaning it doesn't get the highest FPS on some benchmark site like the one whored in this article.

So is it time to drop the $400? To rely on buggy drivers rushed out by ATi or nVidia? To snarl at DirectX's mysterious problems, which may or may not be related to some of your older hardware not agreeing with your new card?

You've stared at the numbers on the site, and you don't see any reason why not. Did you know some sites exist (and make money) just by getting new video cards and "benchmarking" (aka "playing") them? Is this fair? Are you going to contribute to this universally unfair practice? Of course, you clicked through to buy from the first vendor listed on the site. You can hardly wait for the UPS man to come tomorrow (you can afford expedited shipping, you only paid 95% of what you'd pay at a retail store anyway).

As a savvy PC gamer, you've already downloaded the latest crack off Usenet. You never pay for software-why should you? The hardware costs enough as it is, besides, each game on the PC is just an iteration of Doom or Command and Conquer. Brainless blowing away, or boring resource management? You love 'em both. Or at least, they're available, and you play them.

You laugh at your buddies with an Xbox, because "I can build a more powerful system than that for half the cost!" You've scorned the Gamecube because "The Gamepurse is for kiddies!" Your Playstation 2, purchased for Final Fantasy X, lies collecting dust next to your DVD player (which sucks compared to the one on your computer-NATCH!)

You pause a bit to think about your computer purchases over the last year:

• Athlon T-bird and motherboard-$250.

• Athlon XP and motherboard-$400.

• "L337" Custom Water Cooled Case-$300

• 1 Gig RAM (purchased 256MB at a time)-$400.

• SB Audigy-$95.

• GeForce 3-$350.

Now this Radeon card will be about $400, but it's worth it! Buy a Mac? Never! They don't have games, and besides, they're too expensive.

Buyer's remorse never seizes your temples with its steely vice grip. You'll never lose your job at the helpdesk, and even if you do, Mom and Dad will be there to help you out. You're a sharp guy, and you're surely going places. Right after this game of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, that is...