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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."
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.
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!
mogorific carpentry experiments
As an All-In-Wonder Radeon owner, just want to clear up the things the article glosses over. You can't set it to record the same show no matter what time it comes on, you can't view listings more than 7 days in advance, and unlike a Tivo, it won't record similar shows for you. This is not set-it-and-forget-it software, and people need to stop comparing it to Tivo. It's much closer to a VCR than to Tivo: you have to manually program it, and it's just not that smart. (The quality's outstanding, though.)
What's your damage, Heather?
I am the "proud" owner of a Radeon All In Wonder. I dropped close to $300 on the card. I bought it hoping to set up a home theatre PC. I was looking forward to experimenting with broadcasting the video via 802.11 to the downstairs office so that my GF could watch while working.. etc.
ATI totally caved to Microsoft and only supports their "latest" video capture API (DirectShow). Well guess what even though DirectShow has been out for a long time, there doesn't seem to be a lot of support for it -- even from Microsoft. So if you want to use NetMeeting or Windows Media Server or Real Server -- you can go suck an egg.
The video capture software they bundle it seems to capture into a proprietary MPEG2 format that doesn't play on other computers. If you want to share something you captured, you need to re-encode it.
There are third party applicaitons available -- I think that FlashMPEG can do capture for it now.
All in all, I am *REALLY* disappointed with the card. The hardware seems fine, but the software & support just blow.
Evolution: love it or leave it
Are all the features available from Linux? Are the drivers open source, or are they semi-closed, like nVidia's? How good is OpenGL performance on Linux?
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.
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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).