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

PCI?

[CmdrTaco (editor)]

I may be a minority here, but recently I've been searching for PCI versions of cards such as this ATI one. I've been trying to make a home made TIVO type box, and so far I have a FlexATX Sis620 board with a 533 Celeron in a Sahara1000 FlexATX case. The problem is there are only 2 PCI and no AGP, so I'm quite limited in my choices for quality capture cards such as the All-In-Wonder. Is there any reason why most of the video cards geared toward capability rather than gaming performance are also almost exclusively manufactured as AGP? I'd think hardcore gaming would be just about the only reason to need big boost in speeds.

Re:PCI?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

#1 works out of the box. The thing by default records up to an hour's previous footage constantly, allowing pause, replay, etc. Changing the channel kills this (it starts a new buffer).

#2 is possible, and somewhat simple. You'll have to screw around a bit, to get a bash prompt on the serial port. Once there, you send a few pre-compiled binaries to it, allowing some more functionality (this doesn't require opening the thing, no idea how it affects the warranty). The simplest way would be to set up some script on a cron tab that shells in and manually starts up the appropriate binaries. You can of course manually record shows.

Also, the guide format is partially/completely hacked, but isn't public. It wouldn't be too tough to write a libwww perl script to grep tvguide.com listings, and reformat it in a way that the tivo would understand. I'm not sure what more I can say that would be legally safe.

I hope ATI finally pulls it off

[wackybrit]

In the past, ATI's 'All In Wonder' cards have been pretty crappy compared to the other cards out at the same time. You wouldn't be running Quake1/2 at a decent res on those puppies with a good framerate.. whereas the TNT was far better but had far less 'features'.

Finally it seems video processing power has reached a level similar to that of CPU power. That is, the latest 'high-end' spec is overkill for 95% of applications, and very fast 'general use' products (such as the All-In-Wonder) are now actually pretty good.

This card will satisfy nearly all users except those who want to run Quake 3 at 1600x1200 in 32 bit color, and offers more 'user features' than regular nVidia based cards can currently bring to the table. However, unlike with past All-In-Wonder cards, this will actually be able to run most games at a decent speed in a decent resolution!

Good for ATI!

Re:Graham

[irregular_hero]

Don't make me go there. ATI's website is hell (dont know how bad it is currently, but historically it's been a huge mess) so it's near impossible to find out which driver you need. Not to mention Detonator is the bomb.

Hmm. Last I checked, the "Find a Driver" link on the front page went right to a selection screen for card and OS. Maybe that's a different ATI.

The poster that you're complaining about is actually right. In terms of the "all-in-one" Video Input-capable cards, ATI has always had the best set of utilities and hardware for people who didn't care about getting a bit higher in Quake's frame rate. Hydravision, ATI's multiple monitor-support software, is still head and shoulders better than any other video card manufacturer's setup. And ATI's "multimedia" applications are tightly integrated and work well. nVidia's "Personal Cinema" is quite a bit clunkier and not integrated with the other media "bits" as well. I know -- I use both.

Where ATI has always fallen down is the quality and efficiency of their drivers. They don't release performance fixes well or often enough, although they've made some good strides to get better. Now that ATI sells chipsets to other manufacturers (following nVidia's lead), we might see them start beating on the capabilities of their drivers soon enough.

Case in point: On paper, the Radeon 8500/128 has some features that could give it a definative edge on the Ti4. Unbound by drivers, it could very well have higher performance than most of the nVidia chipsets -- it already pushes the envelope set by the Ti3 very well. It has a highly efficient way of managing memory bandwidth -- of which it has more of than the nVidia card... It has an incredible shading engine that promises nearly double the performance of anything on the nVidia card... Its GPU, the PTIII, is theoretically capable of a higher fillrate at 32-bit than the nVidia card.

But, of course, it all comes down to how well the software interfaces with the hardware. The drivers need work. Maybe ATI will get it together, and maybe it won't.

It'll be fun to watch. I, frankly, can't wait until there's some good competition among video chipset vendors. I was getting bored after 3dfx tanked.

So what happens with 64MB?

[erroneus]

Okay maybe I'll get modded down -2 fricken-moron for this...

...but what is wrong with the 64MB version? Does it go into swap space or something?

Re:Don't buy it! Drivers STINK

[jafuser]

I agree. I quit buying ATI because of their horrible drivers and the crappy software that came with it. Their video capture software left a lot of room for improvment. I hate GUIs which are over-done in appearance which hide the buggy bloated code underneath.

I miss not having the ability to capture TV images, but then again I don't watch much TV anymore anyway.

Re:Don't buy it! Drivers STINK

[stevarooski]

I own an earlier ATI All-in-wonder, and the drivers are indeed lacking in that they're flaky as hell. And hey, wasn't there a big flap about ATI optimizing their drivers specifically for Quake 3 not too long ago in order to appear more competative while running everyone's favorite 3D office app?

Also, comparing ATI drivers to Creative is just downright cruel and unusual. I'm still waiting for an official (read: functional) Windows 2000 driver for my Creatve DVD card. I think I'll be opening a skishop in hell before THAT ever gets released.

Re:How is the Linux support?

[fwankypoo]

This may be the case for the AIW 8500 128 (no DV) but I can't say for sure. I know that the AIW7500 uses a different (analog) tv capture circuit than the (digital) 8500DV, if the 8500 sans DV uses the same digital capture device, then it may be safe to assume that it's supported by GATO.