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All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro Review
VL writes "From synthetic, to real-world game benchmarks. TV capture, DVD playback, and 2D/3D image quality... we covered all the bases with a review of All in Wonder 9600 Pro."
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Aren't there a million sites out there that do hardware reviews? Or is it a slow newsday?
~S
AIW has been a nice low cost video swiss army knife. If I weren't so happy with my ATI Radeon 9000 (and ATI's support of it with drivers!) I would get one of these.
How is linux support for this beast ?
Will it do decent GL ?
Do they test the linux drivers, or is this another one of those "there exists only one platform, and it's name is 3DMark"-reviews?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Strange, this "timing" lark. I wonder if they struggle to meet the deadline or just let thngs hang around until the public start buying in earnest for Xmas...
:-)
Since it supports 2 monitors (prime requirement for me) I might even buy one... be nice to actually enable 3D to more than "minimal" for a change
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Are the Windows XP drivers up to snuff with this release? Previous All in Wonder drivers have sucked and have been unreliable for programattic access. I had to switch last year to another capture card manufacturer. Clif Blogzine.net Fortress of Insanity
clifgriffin > blog
So you thought you'd submit a story to Slashdot to get some visitors to your site. Well done. Yes, it's a cheap way to get some publicity for a vaguely tech related site. But didn't it occur to you to ensure it could survive the slashdotting before you submitted the story?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Why get the 9600 with quad piping when you can the 9700 with the 8x piping.
What's so special about this review?
For those of us with DVI LCDs is there a good 3D card which supports dual DVIs? I have two Iiyama DVI 19" LCDs and my current card (GeForce4 Ti 4600) only supports one DVI and one VGA (so one display is perfect and the other noticeably less so). This (yuck!) only supports dual VGA!!!
I've been looking but I can't find a flavor of Radeon or GeForce that supports dual DVI. With the latest fantastico-new games (like Deus Ex2, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, etc.) being released in the near-term I'd really like to upgrade (replace) my older PC - I'd like to get dual DVI out and superb gaming performance/graphics (so it would have to be on par with the 9600's etc.).
Any ideas/help?
Thanks,
--
Matt
I think the card is great and has a ton of functionability. But when the time came for me to buy a PVR card, I had to skip on this one in favor of the hauppauge wintv pvr 350 PCI card and a seperate video card solution.
I had to do this dasterdly deed due to the current state of linux driver support (ie lacking). Is anyone developing drivers for this or is ATI creating a too fast of moving target. Does anyone have any alternative solutions?
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
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Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
Is it a review of a card, or a review of a review? If the site weren't slashdotted, I could tell...
Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips.
From Matrox's website Matrox Millennium G550 Dual-DVI Matrox has always been a great competitor in the 2D desktop... dual-head technology is strictly Windows based for this card though.
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
My capture board of choice..
I'm currently on my 3rd AIW ATI card. Good bang for the buck and darn good perfomance.
I've used other boards like Osprey but ATI's gear always seems to do it better, and tends to have better bundled software and 3rd party support.
Up until recently, The Mach chipset in older AIW's was 'ok' for gaming. But I wasnt much into gaming. I preferred em for capturing.
But now.. They have a great cap card AND gaming card!
I'd say ATI today, is what Voodoo was a few years ago..
http://www.siimage.com/documents/SiI-WP-001-A.pd f
but it will probably take about two years to gain any serious market penetration. Even superior technology needs time to gain acceptance; look at the fact that SATA drives still arent prevalent as a good example, in spite of being clearly superior. In fact, it wouldnt be hard at all to make a drive that is both ATA and SATA, just like it wouldnt be hard to make a CRT that is both VGA and DVI.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Well, if the "drivers are a little too involved to set up" then that's certainly something the review should mention!
This isn't all about games either, this isn't a hardcore gaming card, this is a "wide" product meant to be an overall decent graphics card for desktop and games. You have the PVR features for instance. Are those supported on any other OSen than Windows? If yes, out of the box or does it require third party drivers and/or software, will the remote function with these? If it's not supported, why? How does that compare to the competition, etc, etc.
A review that doesn't even touch on these issues are all but useless. Zero information, seeing how there's a million of these reviews already.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
There's a new kid on the block when it comes to graphics cards.
XGI Volari
"A Dremel is something these users will need to keep handy. Remember, the Dremel is for the SFF case, and not to lop off the FM-Tuner."
I'm surprised he rated the card so well, considering case modifications are required to make it fit in the SFF case. Your average gamer/PC user will not want to go through the hassle of cutting part of the case to make it fit. They'll probably just return it if they can't make it fit immediately.
Jeebus! And this is insightful how?
Damn it, where's my HDTV support?????
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro: Like the AIW 9800 Pro, this mainstream offering supports DX9 and has some great A/V capabilities. It also has a couple of unique features that separates itself from the rest of the AIW line.
Date: November 21, 2003
Manufacturer: ATI
Written By: Hubert Wong
Price: $205 USD
The All-In-Wonder series have been a great success for ATI. Recently, they've been coupling some great TV-Tuning functionality with a modern VPU. This is a far cry from early All-In-Wonders (AIW) where the VPU was based on a handicapped version of their fastest card.
Another smart decision was releasing different variants of the AIW cards, each targeting a different market segment. The AIW VE was aimed at the budget market, where potential users may not have an AGP slot available. This AIW lacked a remote, and used a two year old VPU, but it was priced very low, and the multimedia aspect matched the top-end AIW 9700 Pro (now discontinued in favour of the faster 9800 Pro VPU). The AIW 9000 was another mainstream part, but supported DirectX 8.1 gaming. This card suffered something of "middle child syndrome" and didn't seem to get as much fanfare as the other AIW parts. The AIW 9800 Pro is ATI's current top dog, matching their quality multimedia features with their most modern VPU (until the XT came out).
Though the VPUs (and hence, the price) differed, what all three cards had in common was the TV-Tuner and the Theater 200 Video Processing Engine (VPE). Another thing they had in common, was the inability to output to dual CRT monitors. Considering that multimedia authors live and die with multi-displays, this was quite an omission in the AIW series. Today, we'll be looking at the AIW 9600 Pro, which has everything current AIWs have, and includes DirectX 9 support, Theater 200, FM-Radio (a new feature), and the previously MIA dual CRT display support.
Specifications
You can grab ATI's full specifications from their page, but I thought it would be good to outline a few important features.
TV-ON-DEMAND: Exactly as it sounds. With the AIW 9600 Pro, you can record your favorite programs, and pause live TV (playing it back whenever you want) directly on to your hard drive. The Gemstar GUIDE Plus+ is a software and web based application that works much like a TiVO's TV guide.
FM-ON-DEMAND: New to the AIW series is the AIW 9600 Pro's ability to listen to and record live radio. This works by attaching an antenna to the IO panel on the card. Unfortunently, this antenna isn't included, and you'll need to pick up your own.
THRUVIEW: Like other AIW cards, you can view TV through a translucent overlay on your desktop. This will allow you to work on your primary window, while still being able to watch TV. In theory, this sounds great, but I found it too distracting to use in a practical environment.
Remote Wonder: A fully wireless remote, that works by radio frequency, rather than infrared. That means the signal will pass through most walls found in homes, and at a range of about 30 feet. We reviewed it here, so check that review for our full thoughts.
EAZYLOOK: Also known as the "10 foot interface". An issue with past ATI TV-Tuning based setups was the interface was too small to read on an actual television set. Add the typically low resolution of TVs, and you can see the problems. EAZYLOOK uses a much friendlier and simplified menu, and the font size is much larger, making it easier to use.
MulTView: This is a feature that will enable dual TV tuner capabilities including Picture-in-Picture and independent channel surfing. Want to watch one channel, while recording another? You couldn't do it before, but now you can, so long as you have an additional ATI TV Wonder. Hopefully, this is something ATI can integrate into one card in the future.
DirectX 9: The AIW 9600 Pro offers full DX9 support.
The ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro
Unlike earlier ATI products, the shipping boxes are squarer now, as opposed to
I have the TV Wonder VE, which is essentially the TV tuner part of this card (well it turns out to be more complicated than that, but for argument's sake).
The applications for watching and recording TV shows suck. Real bad. I have the latest version from their website too.
The best program I encountered was Snapstream, and it works with the card reviewed in this article. But it uses ACCESS and Jet to store tv shows, and can you guess what happened 3x before my trial period was over? That's right, corrupt database.
One further note, these cards will NOT work with Myth TV, the linux option. The TV Wonder series does work with Myth, though.
Can't ati figure out that there is a huge market for a top of the line video encode/video decode video card with marginal 3d performance for under $75?
How else can we do mythTv or embedded systems manufacturers get their systems below $150 with a dvd burner?
I would encourage ATI to pursue a high end all in wonder for 3d performance as well as a low end for price which does video encode/playback with excellent quality.
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Make your lungs hold breath inside!
Lovers break caresses for me
Love enhanced when I've gone by.
You'll feel me coming,
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From afar you'll see me
I'm a sensation.
They worship me and all I touch
Hazy eyed they catch my glance,
Pleasant shudders shake their senses
My warm momentum throws their stance.
I leave a trail of rooted people
Mesmerised by just the sight,
The few I touch are now disciples
Love as One I Am the Light...
Soon you'll see me, can't you feel me
I'm coming...
Send your troubles dancing he knows the answer
I'm coming...
I'm a sensation.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I've had an AIW 9800 pro in my system for a while now. 9600 seems a few steps behind.
Isnt it Most Oddest that this card was released a MONTH ago.. and with it 3 similar Reviews?? how is this news?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
The ATI Radeon cards that ship on PowerMac G4 and G5 in the past few years already have DVI and ADC. All you'd need is an adapter from ADC to DVI and you'll get dual DVI.
I had an AllinWonder Pro way back in the day. Used it to sample in some digital video and back up some of my VHS tapes to HD. Drivers sucked. When I got Windows 2000, it totally broke. Since then, I've avoided the whole thing by getting a digital camera with USB drivers. Much more flexible anyways, and you can plug in external sources into the dv camera and I'm back where I was with the AllinWonder.
So here's my video card suggestion: Forget the 9600 AiW and go straight to a 9800 non-pro version. According to Tom's hardware, 20-30% performance difference over the 9600 graphically. Finally, do NOT get the Pro, XT, or SE versions of the 9800 unless you are a hardcore gamer. I was able to get a Radeon 9800/128 meg version for $185 on EBay!
The lower clock speed of the 9800 vs 9800 Pro affects performance minimally, but you can also overclock the regular 9800 to have Pro-like speeds, from what I hear.
Tom's hardware also indicated VIRTUALLY NO PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCE between the 128 and 256 meg RAM versions of the RaDeon 9800 Pro card.
----
Basically, the extra RAM, fluff features ATI puts on their cards is for the kiddies. If you want to buy in, go for it. Otherwise, be smart, take advantage of the core technology by getting the 9800 -- you'll get all the performance and save $200. Save your money for dedicated, portable peripherals.
Why do hardware reviews only test the hardware out under Windows? Are there any hardware review sites that review hardware under Linux? Just because a piece of hardware performs nicely or efficiently under Windows doesn't mean the same applies under Linux.
Things are Linux oriented hardware review should cover:
1. Linux based synthetic benchmarks
2. Benchmarks under popular Linux games
3. OSS drivers (yes/no)
4. Linux support (yes/no)
Click here
Right up front we're making a comprimise on price, budgeting I have done my some research (that site, among others, seemed the most helpful) and I'm leaning toward the Asus V9250 or an MSI FX5200. Do keep in mind that this will be a Windows machine, as the guy is decidedly non-computer technicalish.
So sure, this is slightly off-topic - don't feel obligated to respond or moderate. If you do happen to have a good suggestion as to the best video card value under one hundred bucks, please chime in. Thanks.
does anyone else here have one of these cards? how do you use it?
I want 2D games back.
Where the editors are idiots and affiliate sales from Barnes and Nobles and Thinkgeek run rampant. The only reason they get any traffic is because people have nothing better to do. A better tech/geek discussion site would bury them.
I got the 9500, red circuit board, L-shaped memory and implemented W1zard's "soft mod" to open up all 8 pipelines and overclocked it. Now it runs faster than a 9700 and only cost $99. The drivers even recognize it as a 9700 :-)
DScaler
A good Media player that I like is Core Media Player. But media players are getting to be a dime a dozen. Video Lan Client isn't too bad.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I got a Radeon 9500 (the variant built on a 9700 PBC) and re-enabled all the disabled features. Instant 9700pro+ after overclocking. Better than a 9600 and cheaper too.
hacked drivers @ http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/download.php
of course it doesnt do tv capture
Sorry dude, the flash movie is 404.
I am now on my 3rd "ATI All-in-wonder" (8500DV). I DO NOT recommend it or any ATI all-in-wonder. Why? My current card sucks, pure and simple.
My current setup is WORST after my upgrade:
Before: ATI-AIW 128 'pro' with an Athlon 600 (Win 98)
Now: ATI-AIW-Radeon 8500 DV, with an Athlon 2000 (Win 2000)
Both have the "latest drivers"
- The only good thing about the card is the 3D (Radeon), my gaming experience really got better.
- The worst is the DVD Playback. (Both cards have an imbedded hardware decoder), it is choppy, mainly during high-speed action (The matrix looked very good on my old system, but I cannot watch it anymore). If I used my PC for more than 1 hour before listening to a movie, it looses frames every few seconds. I must reboot before starting to listen to movies, and it does not always work.
- If I use the DVD player buttons to fast (fast forward, pause rewind real fast) the screen fills with green dash ( "-" ) or underscore ( "_" ).
The green will be present on DVD playback and TV until I reboot the PC. Often the whole DVD player will hang the PC, usually the same movies in the same area (problem with error corrections?)
- Furthermore the TV recording capabilities got a lot worst, my recordings will often be more choppy than before, I have to set lower resolutions / fps to be sure not to miss many frames (or sound).
- The menu have an annoying feature, each time I re-open the TV-Tuner and maximize I must re-position the menu. It is placed by default in the middle of the screen (I think at the bottom of a 800x600 screen).
[2003 Update:]
- I got so tired of the bad DVD playback, I now have bought a set top player. My decision was triggered when recently bought DVDs was giving an "Invalid decoder key" message! I could not watch many DVD's on my PC anymore. (I believe this was a Windows driver problem, I made several re-install and it always after one of the "security update" that I got the problem).
- I jumped on the card upgrade when it came out: 450$. The biggest problem are the drivers. This is obvious because of all the software related problems that show up with time and disappear after a reboot or a full re-install (I must do this every 6 months).
All available upgrades does nothing for my problems, upgrading for me is only a question of "hope" and interface look, all the real problems are still present.
I got really pissed off when ATI decided (18 months later) that I could get the latest software (3rd update generation) ONLY by sending then 5$ for a CD (you must enter the original CD to install many multimedia software items).
- Even worst that I had to install Win2K since ATI does not support more than 3 generation of OS and XP was not an option, I did not want to shell out the hundreds of $ it costs (I got a free Win2K original CD from work).
Any chance of one of these cards ever coming with something better than mp2 encoding/decoding?
With the horsepower of the new cards, and all the bells and whistles, I'm wondering howthese things do for CAD/3D as opposed to a FireGL 8800 for example,for my home PC.
- i'm still waiting to be able to use the PCI AIW card ATI released this time last year... - i was quite naive in assuming ATI cared about the Linux market, and bought the card... it works fine as a video card, but AIW? TV capture/viewing? nope! - PC hardware manufacturers should heed a warning: Don't ignore your current and potential future market. Do support Linux, or you may find that your company has developed an unsavory reputation along with way... - i cannot recommend ATI as a "Linux savvy" manufacturer
Just bought it. Followed all the advice on Nvidia driver removal, etc.. And it's buggy! I can't run the TV on demand because it freezes after a minute or so. I can't run the Guide+ out of the TV because it goes into an infinite loop. But, worst of all, I keep getting a 2nd level tech named Shabu who's advice is just plain garbage. He keeps feigning amazement at these issues because he has never experienced them on his crappy system at home running ME. He has no concept of SW and programming and so it's like banging your head into a brick wall trying to convey these problems to him. Unfortunately, ATI's tech support runs out after 30 days and then you need to call an expensive 900 #. I say stay away from ATI and save your money. Too much hassle and too much BS.
I've got a 9800pro aiw, and I'm pretty happy. I also have a 8500 aiw and a rage 128 aiw. The biggest deal with AIW cards is that if you have digital cable, you mainly use it as a video in card (atleast we do, the extra HBOs, HistInt, IFC etc are digital here). Older versions of the MFC software were pretty screwy, but the latest versions (since summer/fall 03 or so) have been pretty good.
I haven't done much research into using AIW cards on linux boxes, but will be trying soon once we build a linux server from my wife's old computer parts and my old computer parts. Is there a way to use an AIW tuner card to capture mpeg2 vids under linux CLI? Eventually, I'd like to control it via a web interface from any comp in the house. Or is there a good tv tuner card that works well with linux and is controllable via cli?
I've got a pcHDTV card and have done some transport stream captures in Linux. I've tried playing them back on a friend's Shuttle XPC (running Linux) with an Athlon XP2400+ and GeForceFX 5200. NVidia's drivers do support XvMC (motion compensation) on this card, and Xine is able to take advantage of it. But I'm still not 100% thrilled with the performance. There's some slight judder/jitter, mostly noticable in smooth pans, and that's with everything scaled to 1280 pixels wide. If I try to run the display at 1920 pixels wide, it seems to stress the fill rate or in any case cause it to get much choppier.
Supposedly GeForce4 MX cards might actually have better XvMC support, but I haven't verified this. For this specific purpose I think the general advice is that the GF4MX cards are better than GF4Ti models.
Not that Windows HD cards and drivers are apparently much better. I've seen complaints from at least one Windows HTPC user that he's not happy with playback there either.
So a bunch of us are watching the Roku HD1000 unit very closely. This is a set-top box based around the ATI Xilleon chip -- a MIPS core surrounded by specialized graphics hardware, including full HDTV MPEG decoding.
Best of all, it runs Linux. An initial SDK (gcc toolchain) is due out in the next week or so. There are Roku folks hanging out in the main Roku thread at avsforum, and have been answering questions and taking suggestions. They also just set up a mailing list of their own for technical discussions.
As soon as the product was announced there were a bunch of us who immediately thought of using this as a transport stream player, and although the initial firmware does not do that, they have already released two beta versions in the last few weeks developing this as a feature. Apparently their developers also have HD capture cards and have an interest in making this work :-)