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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
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 .
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!
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 $40 more and buying a GF4 4200.
What ever happened to that project funded by the weather channel to make a DRI driver? When its done is anyone even going to be buying these cards anymore?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Stable drivers?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
This is kind of irresponsible journalism, the reviewer has simply lost the objectiveness, and the article seems to be biased, infact heavily biased.I know many wouldnt agree and swear by ATi, its not about ATI being good or bad, its about over hyping a product.
Infact while reveiw, the whole commentry is manufacturers spec sheet. Where are the facts buddy!!? No comparison, as if it were the only card in the market?I am sure it must be a good card but we need hard specs actual figures, not sensationalist journalism.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
They also have a preview. (which is as good as most reviews)
The conclusion, just point to any tech site and you will find a review.
You post on Slashdot, after all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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?
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!
Acording to this Site flashing a new BIOS to use PC cards in a Mac is mostly harmless (tried it myself with geforce)
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.
This was one of my last-ditch efforts to fix the problem. While I now benefit from an updated BIOS, the problem still exists.
Thanks anyway.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
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.
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
thats kinda ironic, i sprung the extra $100 for the 8500 dv specifically because i wanted a firewire port and i was all outa pci slots
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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.
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
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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
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.
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 ?
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.