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ATi's All In Wonder Radeon 9700 Pro
FlippedBit writes "ATi has taken the wraps off their latest Swiss Army Knife 3D Graphics Card
with TV Tuner and Remote Control capabilities, that rival most discrete
solutions. The All In Wonder Radeon 9700Pro packs a ton of A/V features and is
driven by their new R300 VPU.
HotHardware has a look at this new beast and all its bells and whistles, right
here."
I hate to sound like a whiner, but this card would be perfect on my Mac. Between my game reviews, this would do it all - render by OS X games great, for my console reviews I could plug the svideo cables in for screenshot captures right to Quicktime/iMovie video.
At the moment I ue a Formac Tevion, which works well through the Firewire, but as someone who believes that less hardware is better, ATI should really think about making a Mac version of this card. I can't imagine it would be all that hard - the hardware is AGP on both platforms, so it would just be someone at ATI writing some OS X drivers for this device.
Not sure if anyone else cares about this, but I've been annoyed by ATI's lack of good video capture tools on the Mac since - well, since I started using Mac's in February of this year.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
...When you pry it out of my cold dead hands.
Or when ATI starts to provide decent Linux 2D/3D drivers for their products.
This is great progress for ATI, especially considering the weakness of it's main competitior in "home cinema" field...
Now if they could just get some **decent** drivers to go with this card (catalyst is a great step towards the goal, dont get me wrong, but ATI has always been a little weak in driver field)
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
but its just hard to justify wanting this until Doom III is out and we all know exactly what works well with it.
but then again, like they say
If ATI were a Winston Cup NASCAR, we'd say that the company is efficiently firing on all eight cylinders.
so it better work cuz this is good stuff...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Anandtech has a review and TechReport as well .
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
The performance on these things is fantastic. Of course, being the cruel world it is, ATI's linux drivers prevent me from even considering purchasing a card. I'll wait for NV30, thank you.
Beware - owning this will be a DEAD giveaway that you have a very, very tiny penis.
Games. And TV.
The latest All-in-Wonder Value edition has the thing they've been missing: beer. Yes, it actually has a small microbrewery/breakout box, so that your computer can be all that you need; it even does it by remote control.
The full package includes an IV breakout box from which cola is fed interveinously (and blood removed), effectively eliminating any and all need to leave the computer for any reason whatsoever.
The next edition is expected to be fully sentient, allowing those eccentric geeks who feel the need for friendship (for some strange reason). This new edition will be dubbed "All-in-Wonder: Heroin Edition," crediting the fact that heroin users want for nothing but the drug, just as All-in-Wonder users should want nothing else.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Every time I have purchased on of their products, It hoses my system. Twice is once too many. Never again.
Stupid Humans.....
Should you be interested in a particular word or phrase from a captured show, you can search the close captioned database and playback will begin at the section of the stream.
That feature makes my day :) Kudos to ATI for adding something useful to the video recorder program.
This is a cool gadget to have on the computer with the instant replay/time shifting Tivo-like capabilities and it's there on my list of "toys" to have. However, I don't think sitting at a desk in front of a computer with a TV tuner card and a monitor will be able to replace the comfort and convenience of plopping down on the couch to watch TV.
There's never enough when you have too little
Gnashes his teeth and tears his hear out...
;-)
Aaarrrggghhhh, only 3 months after I bought my latest and greatest GC, yet another one comes out which is better. I'm becoming obsolete... Sinking into oblivion... Nnnnnnnoooooo......!
you said it. If you need 3D ATI gets ruled out. Its too bad, since this weekend I could have bought a ATI 8500LE 128MB for only $99 at Compusa, but knowing that I'd like the option to be able to play UT2003 or Doom III when it comes out, I'm going to be spending $40 more and buying a GF4 4200.
What ever happened to that project funded by the weather channel to make a DRI driver? When its done is anyone even going to be buying these cards anymore?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Stable drivers?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Read the article?
This is kind of irresponsible journalism, the reviewer has simply lost the objectiveness, and the article seems to be biased, infact heavily biased.I know many wouldnt agree and swear by ATi, its not about ATI being good or bad, its about over hyping a product.
Infact while reveiw, the whole commentry is manufacturers spec sheet. Where are the facts buddy!!? No comparison, as if it were the only card in the market?I am sure it must be a good card but we need hard specs actual figures, not sensationalist journalism.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
My Ati-all in Wonder BS has been nothing but a headache from the get go. The Tv flips out for a few minutes after every boot up and all the discs and new drivers they have sent me haven't done squat. They just stopped supporting for Win95 and gave up on it. Their media center is like some god awfull evil Microsoft contraption that tries to take control of everything including your cd player and then flips out when decide to just use the windows cd player because their is a piece of garbage. ATi is a joke and their tech support is worse. Do not support them.
I just heard some, uh, news or something where, uh, Stephen King, uh, died. That was cool. hehe
They also have a preview. (which is as good as most reviews)
The conclusion, just point to any tech site and you will find a review.
So do I.
You post on Slashdot, after all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
By Will Walker, Jesse Lee John LaCourse and Mark Vonhoffe
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
I'd try updating your BIOS. I've seen some funky old motherboards that don't support some AGP calls, causing the system to lock when the video card tries to use them. Updating your BIOS can usually solve this problem.
If ATI were a Winston Cup NASCAR, we'd say that the company is efficiently firing on all eight cylinders.
Jeez, if the Radeon was a car, it'd beat all the other car's in 1/4 mile times and top speed, but in a 500 lap race, at lap 200, the paint would peal, the doors would fall off, and the engine would fall out.
Further, ATI's latest round of hardware has been complimented by relatively stable drivers - a first, as far as the gaming community is concerned.
I hope they mean a first, as in, first time ATI released relatively stable drivers. What bother's me though is "Relatively stable drivers." well, stable in relation to what? In relation to a blind man balancing a chair on his nose while juggling chainsaws?
$500USD, is like way too much in other currencies.
Sorry, Id stick to geforce varients and an additional $50 tv pci card.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Will it do digital TV? HDTV over the air? Analog is scheduled to go off the air. What good is a tuner if there is nothing to receive?
The truth shall set you free!
I think there are a few reasons for this:
1) Probably not any Joe Blow reviewer can get their hands on a new piece of hardware (the manufacturer can choose who reviews...) so there is always the potential for selection bias.
2) There's a strong tendency (and indeed it's easier) to write an article detailing new features of the card than coming up with independent analysis. You can spit out an article based upon a spec sheet and a few qualatative tests in just a few hours. Running independent, objective tests and providing useful context (what does 'Double Precision Framebufferring Alpha Transition System Version Five!' actually mean...) is much more difficult.
3) With really new products, it isn't exactly clear what are valid benchmarks/comparisons. New products can often game old benchmarks. Also old benchmarks and tests may not reflect optimizations and features that CAN be used in FUTURE games, but aren't currently reflected in today's software.
On the whole, computer equipment reviews seem more rooted in the stockbroker tradition than the movie critic tradition. Just reading reviews for computer junk, you get a lot more 'buy' recommendations than 'don't buy.'
I guess ATi decided that it wasn't worth putting the IEEE1394 Firewire port on the card, like the AIW 8500 DV. But I guess most people would be putting this card on a newer mobo, and more and more of them are supporting Firewire directly. Makes sense, I guess.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Acording to this Site flashing a new BIOS to use PC cards in a Mac is mostly harmless (tried it myself with geforce)
To: timothy@monkey.org
please remove me from your list.
By the time Analog goes off the air, your grandpa won't want this card or the system it works in let alone you.
...is hardware MPEG capture. Decode they seem to have, capture would be ideal. The $149 Hauppage WinTV-PVRs have it.
i'm still waiting for the stable mach64
drivers.
that rival most discrete solutions
Until they come out with HARDWARE MPEG encode and decode on the card it rivals nothing.
My DV500 video capture card hardware encodes so my processor doesnt have to waste time doing it. My Hollywood+ and my DV500 card both hardware decode. (Cat a mpeg stream to the hollywood+ card and magically that mpeg 1 or 2 file is displayed.. the newer Hollywood cards do Divix (mpeg4) on the card. while the DV500 will do mpegs 1&2 DV and most AVI file types (Not mpeg4 without a firmware change)
coupled with my Geforce3 I dont see it rivaling anything. ATI's offering is still just a toy, A video card with some neato-things added that are useless for any professional uses (if you want professional results.. I dont see anyone desiring to buy a capture device for anything onther than editing... except PVR.. and if their PVR software that comes with the card is anything like what they send with the last iteration of the all in wonder... it will fail again.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
ATI is a good product, it's just that
the lamers at Xfree86.org can't do math.
maybe they need new code writers that can
find the sum of 2 + 2.
do ya think that slashdot can run this site
on the sales of bawls?
slashdot used to be cool, two years ago.
now it's just advertising for ati, xbox, games, etc.
I don't need the latest DirectX-9 gimmicks and want a passively cooled, cheaper, but fast enough version.
The Radeon 9000 graphic cards are wonderful. An All-In-Wonder-Card based on the Radeon 9000 would be wonderful for my quiet "home theatre - MP3 - DVD - digital videorecorder"-PC.
But with the lack of resonable Linux driver support this won't happen anyway.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Does anyone know about recording (analog) video with this card (or its predecessors) ?
Older cards like Matrox Marvel used to compress Video into MJPEG in Hardware. Sice I recall, DirectShow has still a limitation of 4GB for Videos - how about recording analog Video with this card (or older All In Wonders) ?
Is there a software codec - modern CPUs should be fast enough to do so ? Anyone experiences and comments about quality ?
Some may call the above post Flamebait, but it is true. Jeesh, I remember this same complaint being lodged against ATI back in 1992. Apparently, they are doing something right to still be alive today, despite this constant driver criticism.
I am not a hardware junkie, but I have been following recent "build your own home theater in a PC" sites, and the jury says: build your system around the limitations of your chosen graphics card. The ATI line of "do everything" cards offers unmatched versitility in the home theater PC market, yet you have to carefully match your requirements with your choice of hardware and software (and driver capabilities).
IOW, do your homework, build for today, and don't expect your ATI card to do anything wonderful outside of the scope of your current DIY project.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Hear, hear !!!
What is the best video capture card for Linux, preferrably with a supported hardware MPEG2 encoder?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Via the "Cobra" engine on the R300 chip itself, the AIW Radeon actually has MPEG-2 encoding hardware. It doesn't do the whole process in hardware, but enough to offset between 1/5 and 1/4 of the processing overhead from the CPU. This is typical ATI - their first DVD decoding hardware assistance in chips (I believe in the Rage Pro line circa 1997) had enough hardware to offset a chunk of the processing overhead from the CPU. In the following generation, the new chip had essentially full hardware decoding. Expect the next generation of AIW to follow suit.
Read Anand's review. The R300's "Cobra" engine provides hardware MPEG-2 encoding assistance. Not completely, but enough to offset 1/5 to 1/4 of the CPU overhead. As I understand, no consumer-level MPEG-2 encoding hardware does all the processing onboard but merely offsets some work from the CPU. Of course, ATI has had MPEG-2 decoding assistance for a LONG time - since 1997. In fact, I have a H+ too and the difference in CPU usage levels between the H+ and my AIW Radeon when watching DVDs is negligible. The Radeon provides superior monitor playback and the H+ provides superior TV playback which is why the two still co-exist. One thing many people overlook is the fact that since the AIW is on the AGP bus, you don't run the risk of overloading the PCI bus when doing video capture and the like. Their PVR software has come a LONG way too. When I first got my AIW Radeon I cursed my decision but since December of last year the software has been excellent. I just wish there was something on Linux to rival it. There isn't. Nothing comes close actually.
I'd advise against getting an All-In-Wonder card if you run Linux, since the GATOS team (the folks doing 2D video capture, tuner support, and TV out) and the DRI team (the folks doing OpenGL 3D support) have yet to sync their code so that the two play nicely together. Thus, you can have EITHER video capture and tuner support, XOR accelerated 3D support. You cannot have both.
I could understand if this condition persisted for a few weeks - the teams are different groups with different goals. However, this has been the case for several MONTHS, and I see no motion towards resolving this.
This is one of the places that the bazaar approach is weaker than the cathedral approach - independant teams don't co-ordinate very well in such matters.
So, at this time if you want both tuner support AND accelerated 3D, I would suggest getting a seperate TV tuner card.
(And I am viewing this very post on a AIW7500. I have a classic AIW in my server in the basement, and in the past I've had a Voodoo 3500TV. I have some experience in this matter.)
(And I don't have time to fix this - I have to work on modifying the USB joystick drivers to report the hat as buttons so that I can use it under UT/US2003, getting ATA/133 & LBA48 working, getting video streaming working from my DTIVO, trying to find out why Wine has show regressions in the past week....)
www.eFax.com are spammers
See here for more info.
hth
- Derwen
http://fsfeurope.org/
yet again, all the focus is on AGP... OK, OK, i know that AGP is the slot to use, but for me, a PCI version is critical as i use severl small form factor PCs - which don't have AGP slots, but pack enough punch for my needs in a PC the size of a shoebox...
PCI all-in-wonders are as rare as hen's teeth, and even those models that are four years old are still fetching US$130 and up on ebay - and you won't find
'em in the main resellers market...
so how about it folks? got a good recommendation for a combo graphics card/tv tuner card in PCI that works with Linux?
i'll bet you don't, because there aren't any!!!
ATI has their share of problems, but the All-In-Wonder line is the only decent card to include a tuner.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Battlefield 1942: Crashes Asherons Call 2: crashes & graphic glitches Mafia: crashes GeForce 4600 returned into the AGP slot, Radeon 9700 collects dust until drivers are stable.
The article says that the product and price are not yet available, but actually some computer stores in Toronto are already selling it.
Eg. http://www.pccanada.com
for $574.99 Canadian dollars.
All the right features for me, but I want support for DTV, before the broadcasters legislate DRM. Somebody else said this device will be obsolete before DTV is available. In fact the contrary is true: DTV may create demand for this generation of non-DRM devices.
Until ATI can come up with excellent, not good, but excellent drivers for Linux, Mac, and the PC I am not buying another of their cards! This is a big deal as I am Canadian and bought only their cards for the past 5 years!
I don;t see how this card is SOOO much better then the 85xx AIW line. Sure, i have to get the optional cables, big deal.. The 85xx has been selling for 199 everywhere..
Where's the product enhancements on the video side..?
THis card just keeps rehashing the same old features over and over..
I have a radeon 64mb and besides the remote and HDTV add-ons.. it is basically the same rehash.. (I don't play games)
F.
Not one mention of Linux in the article...
I'm a programmer at a large game company, and not long ago we got our first Radeon. I was astounded at how bad the performance was, and especially at how bad the drivers were.
In fact, the card is performing so badly that ATi has started shipping many Radeon 9700s out to game developers all over the place in an effort to get us to fix our software with their cards, as if it was our fault that they didn't write their drivers according to the DX8 spec.
One of the problems their driver had was that it constantly leaked memory. We couldn't run anything (including sample apps!) on it for more than 5 minutes without it leaking texture memory so badly that it would start paging its texture memory to disk!
I want to see competition for nVidia as badly as everyone else, but I just don't think ATi is it quite yet.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
So how much does this DV500 card cost, and - if reasonable - where can one get it. Details, man, details! If it costs $300 then I think I'll just stick with my does-it-all cards or a good 3d card with a cheaper decoded that burns CPU.
This product is only useful for people with standard cable or antenna. What about everyone with a digital cable box or satellite receiver? We need a cable mouse, or even better a serial control cable for the satellite box (Tivo comes with one).
I used to have an All-In-Wonder Pro (back in the days of the Rage IIc chipset.... when 4mb of video ram was a lot, and AGP was brand new).
Anyway... Back then, there was no such thing as PVR software (not 3rd-party, anyway). Now there's a few like Showshifter and SnapStream PVS...
My question is, does anyone know if there are any PVRs that will automatically edit out commercials when they appear in a TV show? I seem to recall that TiVos used to (or still do it)... Surely there must be PC equivalents, no? Checking around on the websites of both Showshifter and Snapstream, though, they don't make any explicit mention of the ability to NOT record commercials...
ATI has yet to get the drivers right....The issue list is LONG and they've started out where they left off with the 8500 and some really lousy driver support. I like the card, but getting all the bells and whistles to work is nearly impossible. The capture drivers have issues, NWN has MAJOR issues with this card, but it is quick, and I keep hoping ATI will get thier act together driver wise...SOON PLS...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Will we EVER see a decent Linux driver for it?
No?
Then why should I bother paying any attention to it, other than to chalk up one more neato card on the "doesn't work in Linux" list?
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
I am still waiting for the R600, which is supposed to have a very similar chip to that in the Gamecube. Sadly, it is hard to find any information about when and where the R600 will come out.
look a little further down the list, and see the comments about a lack of linux drivers. tsk tsk! i guess it is a winow$ world!
It's had that for awhile. The crappy crash-a-minute Cinema package that comes with the ATI WinTV had it too.
Another cool thing is "magazine mode" which records the closed captions and still pictures taken when the frame changes significantly to make a TV guide-like telecast.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
I had the original AIW card. It was nice for a while, but when i upgraded to a GF4 4200 I had to give up my TV/PVR capabilities too. So I'd suggest getting an ATI TV Wonder so you can painlessly upgrade your video card later. I still haven't got around to buying a TV Wonder so I can start recording shows on my computer again.
Oh, and don't get the TV Wonder VE unless you don't want stereo sound.
I notice in the product description under Vidoeshader there is a mention of -top quality DVD and all-format DTV/HDTV decode with low CPU overhead First fo all does this mean that this card can replace a Digital Cable box and record The Soprano's (HBO is only on digital cable around here). Is ATI going to get flak from hollywood over this card? I though hollywood was trying to stop people from being able to record HDTV boardcasts in digital form? HDTV -> MPEG2 is pretty high quality.
"At that time, the hardware was said to be final, with some minor work left on the accompanying software suite."
Read: the developers were scrambling to get last-minute hacks working. I've bought the past two All-in-wonder cards. It's a great product, but the software, IMHO, is the weak point. A clumsy interface and oddball errors, along with unusually long load-times are a definite downside. Another is the remote software- it only lets you control SOME parts of SOME of the apps. I'd like to see the remote be able to be fully customizeable per application, including non-ATI apps. The Winamp control will be cool, but what about MoodLogic, etc?
Not to complain too much. TV, DVD and an RF remote on your PC is enough to make me buy one...twice.
You just mirror the image of the monitor in the TV, and play/see any game or DVD without worriying (sp?) for lack of space for all the viewers. It also works wonderfully for teaching in small groups.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Which is exactly what the post said. Or did you not realize that 1/4 = 25%?
Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars has to
be the HP-48 series of calculators. They'll run almost anything. And if they
can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into the serial port and load up the
HP-48 VT-100 emulator.
-- Jeff Dege, jdege@winternet.com
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