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."

Comments

So where's the Mac version?

[Dark Paladin]

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.

Re:So where's the Mac version?

[benh57]

Well, you're in luck. (maybe). According to Think Secret, ATI is developing an All-In-Wonder card for the mac.

Re:So where's the Mac version?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to sound like a whiner

It's alright. Most Mac users are whiners.

more reviews here...

[Maditude]

Anandtech has a review and TechReport as well .

Looks interesting

[yobbo]

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.

Re:Looks interesting

[Accipiter]

That's too bad, because I was looking for another 3D card to buy for my system.

After asking around what options there were for good 3D support under Linux, I bought an nVidia GeForce 4. Problem is, I'm having some severe issues with it. Running anything OpenGL that has some intense rendering (Return to Castle Wolfenstein, for instance) will do one of two things: 1) cause X to lock up, flashing Scroll Lock and Caps Lock at me once every second, or 2) spontaneously reset my machine. Obviously, this is not a good thing, and I'm actually quite disappointed.

It appears to be something deeper than a driver issue, though, as I get RTCW to crash under Windows in the exact same manner, and under the exact same conditions as under Linux. (Windows bluescreens, while X locks up.) I've tried Quake3, RTCW, and other simple OpenGL apps (glxgears, fsv, etc.), and all cause my machine to shit itself.

It's not a problem with the card, either, as I bought two separate GeForce4 cards from two different manufacturers, and both had the exact same issues. Plus, my system doesn't contain any backwoods generic parts; Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard, PIII Processor.

I just don't get it. It's a shame, too, because my previous card (3dfx Voodoo3) was a pain in the ass to get working with 3D in Linux. I e-mailed nVidia and posted a message to their forums, both of which have gotten me no replies.

I can't recommend nVidia at this time, and I've heard worse things about ATI's Linux support. Since Linux is my primary OS (I only installed Windows to test out the above scenario), I honestly don't know what to do.

Warning to all males

[Schik]

Beware - owning this will be a DEAD giveaway that you have a very, very tiny penis.

Whoa...

[fireboy1919]

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.

Video Recorder

[atrus]

I was struck by this phrase from the review:

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.

huh...Is it an advert

[tanveer1979]

"If ATI were a Winston Cup NASCAR, we'd say that the company is efficiently firing on all eight cylinders. The Mobility RADEON 9000 rules the mobile market, the well publicized RADEON 9700 Pro delivers the best performance to gaming enthusiasts, and the RADEON 9000 Pro is a solid mainstream card. Further, ATI's latest round of hardware has been complimented by relatively stable drivers - a first, as far as the gaming community is concerned."

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.

Re:Yep

[chefren]

The DRI-project have 3d-support available in CVS and binary snapshots with semi-friendly installers available. I'm using a snapshot now. Remember that this is not yet stable code (whatever that means). Look for 'r200' snapshots on their download page.

Re:Yep

[chefren]

No, it means that if I leave an OpenGL screensaver running while going away for a few hours, I am greeted by the lilo boot menu (i have no timeout) when I come back. Nothing in the logs, the machine just reboots it seems. Also using Xv in mplayer results in a black box that won't go away until I start another Xv app, like xawtv which works well. If you just need Xv, go for the gatos project instead (better Xv, no 3d).

Bad drivers.... BAAAAAD!

[Zakabog]

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?

it rivals nothing...

[Lumpy]

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.