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All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro Review

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the wonder-if-it's-worth-it dept.

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."

1 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Not recomended - bad past experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    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).