GeCube All-In-Wonder 9600XT 128M/TV/FM

An anonymous reader points to Hexus.net's review of ATi's newest All-In-Wonder product, writing "This looks like a rather nice product if you're running an XPC or similar." He excerpts from the review "It doesn't need an external power source, instead it's quite happy sucking from the AGP slot. The end result? Small form factor PC owners will quite happily be able to slot one into their boxes and run it without an issue. The one slot cooler and cool running RV360 core conspire to make sure heat won't be an issue in those enclosed spaces either."

Comments

No Molex connector

[GweeDo]

That is what really suprises me and makes me happy. With the relativily low power PSU that come stock in XPC's this is great. Couple this with a new AMD XP Mobile (45W) processor and you got a nice setup in your new iDeq or Shuttle :)

Re:No Molex connector

[DeathPenguin]

The 9600 models never needed a molex connector, though the 9800 model did and all products based off the newer cores from ATi.

It's an old part.

Re:No Molex connector

[GweeDo]

I am aware this is a slightly older chip. I only note this because of the addition of the TV tuner and FM tuner and such. It is always nice to see a good card with lots of features not hurting those poor 200W PSU's and such ;)

Re:No Molex connector

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a Geforce FX 5900 XT in my Shuttle (together with an Athlon XP 2400+), it requires an extra connector which was a pain because I had to use a extender cable and string it under the HD cage (near the memory).

But it works. No problems so far. I choose Nvidia because I know it works under linux, and I choose a FX because that is currently the only way to get pixel shaders working under cedega (formerly known as winex).

best wishes,

tels

PS: Sorry, havent had time to update my shuttle page on bloodgate.com!

Re:No Molex connector

[Fweeky]

Don't forget AMD's upcoming low power AMD64s and (if you're rich) Opterons. 30-45W :)

Getting easier to see how they're going to cope with dual core now; at this rate they'll end up running cooler than my old 1.4GHz Thunderbird, even without clock scaling.

Re:No Molex connector

[DarkFyre]

Meh. I have a Radeon 9800 Pro and a SB Audigy2 filling the slots in my Shuttle XPC with the default 200W power supply.

I've had no stability problems at all, even when playing Far Cry.

Re:No Molex connector

[karstux]

That's good to know. I have a Shuttle XPC myself, but was afraid to go with a 9800 - I just wasn't sure if that tiny PSU would be able to shoulder it, and installed a 9600XT instead.

Now, since the X800 consumes a bit less than the 9800 I know I can safely upgrade when the time comes. Thanks!

Wow.

[benjamin bruce bales]

Maybe I need to replace my rage 128 pro. Or not.

Re:Wow.

[hopemafia]

You may mod this funny, but I've gone with the "or not" option.

My 32MB Rage Fury Pro still runs everything I want with ease. No tuner, but I have a cable box anyway.

But when I finally do upgrade AIW is probably the way I'll go.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

My media box is still running an ATI rage 128 with tv-out. Means i can watch DivX movies on my tv with a feeble 333MHz and 64MB of RAM.
Marvellous MPlayer, does it all without X

Hardware encoding

[kneecarrot]

I am still waiting for an ATI board with tv-tuner capability that offers hardware-based MPEG-2 encoding of the tv signal. A home theatre PC based on one of these cards will show 10 times the CPU usage and half the quality that a box based on a Hauppauge PVR-250 offers. No comparison, really.

Re:Hardware encoding

[IWKUA]

Not sure if this is what your looking for but, Nvidia's card offers that: "The products will include a TV tuner card with hardware MPEG-2 encoding"

Re:Hardware encoding

[LostCluster]

Given nVidia's historic support of Linux, I wonder if they'll ship with all of the features available on Linux as well? So far, ATI's TV products have simply ignored that market.

Re:Hardware encoding

[tsangc]

It's called the ATI eHome Wonder, a MCE2004 class (Connexant Blackbird MPEG2) card:

http://www.ati.com/products/ehome/

Not an AIW Tuner+graphics combo, but an individual tuner. It's quite well done. Hardware seems okay and it's cheap.

Re:Hardware encoding

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, before you get your wallets out. There is NO support in Linux for ANY of the tv-in functions on the combo cards (all in wonders, radeon vivos, etc). There is support for the "tv wonders" because they're usually just Btx78 based. Don't spend extra to get an all-in-wonder, get a normal one and buy a Happauge card instead.

Re:Hardware encoding

[enrico_suave]

FWIW, ATI has an OEM e-home wonder card that mpeg2 encoding (and is only a half height PCI card) for use in windows MCE machines/bundles... but you can't really get them at like newegg or the like.

Although, I hear ya... hardware encoding is where it's at, and you'd have to pry my pvr350 from machine while I angrily protest for you to stop... =P

e.

Re:Hardware encoding

[ph4rmb0y]

Why would anyone want mpeg-2 encoding? The only reason I could see it is for simple straight-to-dvd recording.

I would prefer a nice high bitrate mjpeg or dv recording, (or huffyuv if I could afford it) then I can do my own mpeg-2 conversion AFTER the video has been processed and is exactly how I want ..

mpeg-2 is a decent playback format, but sucks to edit (wasn't meant for that).

Re:Hardware encoding

[Anonymous Coward]

e-home OEM at newegg for $64 yay internet

Re:Hardware encoding

[Mycroft_VIII]

I harware encoding is available on some AIW products. The 9600 has it.
If you goto ati's site and use thier 'product compare' feature it shows 9600 and higher as doing encoding with hardware. But not all AIW radeon models are available to compare.

Mycroft

Re:Hardware encoding

[jelle]

"It's called the ATI eHome Wonder, a MCE2004 class (Connexant Blackbird MPEG2) card:"

Interesting, but according to the picture on that page, it can't be a blackbird. Blackbird is the codeword that conexant uses for the cx2388x + cx23415 reference design. That means that a blackbird card has those two chips plus the SDRAM chip that is needed for the xc23415. The picture on the ati page only shows two chips that look like a cx23415 with its SDRAM, which likely is much more similar to the Hauppauge PVR250 than it is to a blackbird. But even then it won't work in as much different software as the others, because according to the page linked below, it has different TV encoder chip than the PVR250...

PVR card guide Linky

Re:Hardware encoding

[Froggie]

Do you find that CPU usage is a problem? Granted, with something like a VIA Eden, it would be, but I've got an XP2400+ and it seems to encodes MJPEGs quite happily at 768x576 with only about 20% CPU usage - which I can then transcode, cos Mythtv, like nearly every other PVR system out there, is good at that sort of thing.

It also means I can run filters on the pre-encoded signal - otherwise I'd presumably be limited to whatever the PVR hardware is capable of doing before it runs the signal through its compressor. (This is, admittedly, where CPU becomes tight - a big picture with Mythtv's kerneldeint and denoise3d is slightly too much work. But you can miss the denoise filter off if your signal's good enough, anyway, and I freely admit that the resolution it's set to is a bit over the top.)

I might switch to a PVR250 one of these days, but CPU usage just doesn't seem to be the critical issue with my PVR box at the moment and I had a non-compressing TV card anyway. As processor speed inevitably gets cheaper, I would expect the money to be better spent on speeding up the system and not offloading the work, too.

Re:Hardware encoding

[kneecarrot]

I did find CPU usage a problem, but then again I didn't have anything near to what you were using. I had an old Thunderbird 1.0Ghz. I found encoding at 768x576 to take around 80% which basically meant the box could only singletask while recording. I figured I could either spend $250 on a new CPU/Mobo or upgrade to a PVR250. I'm glad I chose the PVR250... the overall quality of experience has risen significantly.

Linux?

[ConsumedByTV]

Is this now the best TV tuner card for linux or is it going to be 2 years before a proper X server comes out?

It's only slightly off topic to ask, but what's the best video card in this market?

Re:Linux?

[MikeXpop]

If you're looking for a TV tuner card for linux, ignore this. The only drivers for it do not support capture or TV-out.

Re:Linux?

[LostCluster]

I don't think ATI's ever supplied a full Linux driver for their TV tuner products. They simply have never bothered to write a version of their ATI Multimedia Center for Linux. I'm sure people have tried to come up with an open source version, but since they're working from the outside in they have the deck stacked against them.

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the Hauppauge PVR-250 or PVR-350 (or generic versions using the same chipset.) Linux support is fantastic (I should know, I'm the co-author of the ivtv driver) and much better than the ATI All-in-Wonder cards, if you actually want to capture MPEG video in addition to just video overlay.

Re:Linux?

[Alien Being]

ivtv has worked out great for me. Thank you!

My only disappointment is that making DVDs and SVCDs from the streams isn't as straightforward as I thought it would be. I don't want to transcode.

How should I set mythtv to get the right codec/stream params? Is remuxing always necessary? If so, which toolchain is best?

Re:Linux?

[kernelfoobar]

I have a TV-Wonder PCI in my new Linux box. It works flawlessly with the kernel drivers (V4L's bttv). I use tvtimes as the tuner software. Both of these beat ATI's drivers and software. Really, tvtimes supports a buttload of features that ATI's MMC does not have (XDS (channel/show information), fine tuning, output filters, etc...), and no licensing bullshit. As for the drivers, I guess since they are already in the kernel, they didn't bother writing any. They even recommend it!

I say ATI is the one that hasn't a chance.

Recentley Purchased this,

[glassjaw rocks]

My dad just recentley purchased one of these, and I put it in about 4 or 5 hours ago, the card works like a dream, the only problem is, he uses the computer for ebay.

And that's all.

Re:Recentley Purchased this,

[kevcol]

"But dad, I'm telling you- this WON'T help you snipe more auctions! Give it me, 'kay?"

Re:Recentley Purchased this,

[KarmaMB84]

Or go buy like a Radeon 7000 32MB and swap them!

Liking this for sure....

[garagecartel]

Definately a nice piece of Hardware :) Might start working on eating less to save money so I can get one :). The single life doesn't leave me with too deep of pockets these days....

Re:Liking this for sure....

[sydsavage]

The single life doesn't leave me with too deep of pockets these days

If you think life is cheaper with a girlfriend, that might be why you don't have one.

Gee, that's great...

[DeathPenguin]

Now if only there was a model based off a newer core (X800) and ATi's driver support for Linux weren't so pitiful.

Re:Gee, that's great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on earth would you need an X800, and Linux driver support from ATI is fine, so what's the problem here?

Re:Gee, that's great...

[stanbrown]

Yes, I wish ATI would release the information allowing proper Opne Source drivers to be written for their cards. Nice gardware, but pretty useless to me.

Re:Gee, that's great...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/linux/radeon-li nux.html?type=linux&prodType=graphic&prod=products LINUXdriver&submit.x=17&submit.y=11&submit=GO% 21

Suck it up bitch.

Re:Gee, that's great...

[glassjaw rocks]

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence (or lazyness) of its users.

Here's a convienient link

Re:Gee, that's great...

[mbourgon]

Oh boy. Crappy drivers. My favorite.

Re:Gee, that's great...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with them? They are completely and utterly perfect for me. My favourite.

Re:Gee, that's great...

[Anonymous Coward]

How's the tv-input capture and overlay working for you?

Re:Gee, that's great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he likes playing all those new games, like... uh... TuxRacer on his linux machine. ;)

Yes, I know UT2004 has a linux version, and most other games work under WineX. It's a joke. Quit over-analizing.

Re:Gee, that's great...

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does it feel with OpenGL performance less than a third of the already sucky OGL performance with ATI's Windows drivers? And don't all those artifacts look nice? And hey, it only took a couple of months for ATI to publish a fix to the slight oversight of NOT FUCKING LOADING on Athlon machines! Wow, isn't the ATI commitment to Linux fantastic - every second month or so we see a new chip ID added and the version number yanked up 3 or 4 notches (along with 5 - 10 new critical bugs and 5 - 10% slowdowns). Cool, clicking anywhere (like e.g. on the "Cancel" button) in the "ATI Control" tool makes my screen turn yellow, and I need to power-down the computer to get it back to normal. Gotta love the inability to watch video files while having a web browser or something open, because xv overlay is FUBARed with X.org that most distros use today. Wow, not only don't ATI supply pre-compiled kernel modules for the latest most common distributions, but it won't even FUCKING COMPILE without a bunch of patches from various 3rd party community sources found on web forums (rage3d.com - thanks for saving our bacon!). Mmmmmm, with a Radeon 9600XT on a dual Athlon 2400+, 2D operations and redraws are about as snappy as Workbench running in 256 colours on a 14MHz Amiga 1200.

"Completely and utterly perfect."

The hardware rocks. But there are no words to describe how much the drivers and ATI's "dedication to Linux" suck.

Dual VGA connections...

[LostCluster]

One of my complaints with earlier AIW models is that they didn't support dual display setups fully because the TV window couldn't draw on the additional monitors. The double-VGA support take appears care of this issue, but I'm not sure how it'd handle having an additional PCI card for a third monitor.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

I know it's just wishful thinking, but I can't wait for a workstation class card that doesn't require a fan... Damn thing (FireGL X1) makes more noise than everything else in my room combined... And according to the article, this new card won't change that.

Re:zerg

[Jeff DeMaagd]

For a while, I had an ATI FireGL X1 (128MB?). I didn't experience any objectionable noise from it, even for the short times I had the side panel off.

Maybe you could complain to the maker? It might be something they can exchange.

Re:zerg

[doofusclam]

Vrey true. The fan requirement pretty much rules it out of use in my Home Theater PC (a Shuttle cube) as the thing is loud enough already. I'd prefer slightly crippled 3d ability to get rid of that fan.

Re:zerg

[Rob Simpson]

Yeah, I'd say that the plain old AIW 9600 would be a better choice. Slower, but fanless. Or one could replace the heatsink/fan with a Zalman VGA heatsink (I've got one on my 9700), but that probably wouldn't fit in a Shuttle cube.

Re:zerg

[Lord Omlette]

Actually I got it off eBay for 1/5th the price, so it would be kinda silly for me to complain... Easier to bitch on Slashdot than actually do something about it.

You say "for a while", what did you switch to?

Re:zerg

[Semi-Lagrange]

If you don't mind 10-15 minutes worth of manual labor you can slap one of these on and leave the fan unplugged. I've done it and it works just fine. Although mine isn't AIW and you may have trouble fitting the heatsink around the TV tuner.

Re:zerg

[bofkentucky]

perpahs a pci slot fan mounted in the 1st PCI slot would help cool the card, keeping the jet turbine that most graphics cards makers are adding these days from cranking up to full RPM's.

Re:zerg

[ameoba]

A 9600 (the non-pro version) runs quite happily with passive cooling, you just need to look around a bit to find one (Sapphire makes one).

Re:zerg

[Pharmboy]

perpahs a pci slot fan mounted in the 1st PCI slot would help cool the card, keeping the jet turbine that most graphics cards makers are adding these days from cranking up to full RPM's.

You may be totally correct, but I can't help but to think of the joke: What makes more noise than a pig stuck under a fence? Two pigs stuck under a fence.

Using two fans just *might* be noisier than one.

A simple Do-it-yourself TiVo?

[LostCluster]

As the review points out, ATI's software is now designed to take advantage of finding an AIW and a TV Wonder PCI card in the same machine, such as picture-in-picture and having both tuners record at the same time. In addition, ATI's TV products for quite a while have shipped with Gemstar's Guide+ software that provides TV listings that are integrated with ATI's software.

This combination is about as good as it gets for people who get their signals by analog cable... but if you have digital cable or DBS, it can't control your tuner box yet. They've got to work on that issue...

Re:A simple Do-it-yourself TiVo?

[blackmonday]

I have the ATI TV Wonder, and the included software is terrible. It hijacked my other media players, it's clunky, and it looks horrible. The best solution (for Windows) is Dscaler, no other programs I've seen come close to the great simplicity of dscaler. Best of all, it's open source.

Re:A simple Do-it-yourself TiVo?

[Peyna]

I'd recommend Hauppage over ATI's AIW or Tv Wonder

Re:A simple Do-it-yourself TiVo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dscaler doesn't record though, does it? Just overlay viewing?

Re:A simple Do-it-yourself TiVo?

[karstux]

Since it's open source, it shouldn't be that hard to add a simple recording feature if you wish to do so.

Re:A simple Do-it-yourself TiVo?

[blackmonday]

You're right, it's only a TV Viewer. It won't ever have recording capability, according to the author, because it's not one of the features he wants. There are other options for recording, the best I've seen is a non-free application called snapstream, it is excellent. There's Media Portal, but it just crashes on me without a second of TV. Media Portal could be the ticket some day soon.

Where's the external control?

[mjphil]

Neat stuff, but it still wants an IR dongle to control cable and satellite receivers. I know you can cobble up a third party solution, but you shouldn't need to.

Re:Where's the external control?

[cRueLio]

it's better to have a dongle.. (of course maybe one should be included in the package)

if the IR blaster was integrated into the card, your computer would have to be in front of the other devices which means the user cannot also control them... just a thought

Linux support?

[rsilvergun]

I know, I know, they'll be hundreds of these posts...

But still, I think what 90% of people out there want in a computer is
a) Email and Web browsing.
b) Office apps.
and c) Digital content creation. i.e. Simple Pictures and Movie editing.

Linux has the frist two, but it's lacking on the third. Yeah, the BTXXX cards work great, but it'd be nice to have a single all in one solution like this (actually, it'd be nice if it was based on a cheaper video chipset, but I digress).

Oh, and Linux needs an easy to use video editor. Cinelerra's the Gimp of video editing. It's the poster child for overkill when all most want is cut and pasting and some simple transitions.

Re:Linux support?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you realise this, but you do know that you're essentially describing OS X and the iLife apps, don't you?

Re:Linux support?

[geckofiend]

Sounds like maybe you shouldn't be thinking... ;)

The last AIW was recognized as just about the worst capture card on the market. All in one solutions are great for folks who don't know any better and think they're getting somethign great.

The PVR250/350, Avermedia M179 and Yuan MPG600 lines of hardware MPEG2 capture cards are by far superior and have excellent Linux support.

Easy video editor? Avidemux2 is pretty darn easy.

Driver support?

[Anonymous Coward]

RV360

Whats the current OSS driver support like for the RV360? I understand the RV350s still arn't properly supported even in the very latest X.org releases; are the RV360's supported at all? Does anyone know how well the other AIW features are supported using OSS drivers?

Just curious, and I know all of you Linux users can happilly use the closed ATi drivers for this card, so please don't bother replying if that's all you're going to say.

It's analog

[Bram Stolk]

Huh...
This card has no DVI, meaning that you have
to do a totaly useless digital->analog->digital
conversion when hooking up to a flat panel.

Re:It's analog

[smallfries]

The review sucks as well. He says that getting dual vga is an acceptable compromise to gain dual-display, whats wrong with dvi/vga and a dvi->vga converter like the nvidia boards have?

Re:It's analog

[Hungus]

Power constraints were my understanding, the review seemed to be biased towards Small Form Factor PCs

Re:It's analog

[Mycroft_VIII]

Some AIW products do this, including the original AIW-Radeon I have sitting on a shelf, one vga and one dvi connector.
The AIW-9600 does not however, it has dual vga adapters.

Mycroft

Re:It's analog

[smallfries]

How does having a DVI connector consume more power than VGA?

Re:It's analog

[Hungus]

I was trying to find the article to back up my statement, however I cant seem to find it. My understanding then, is that dvi-> vga uses more power than vga -> vga so power wise it is cheaper to add a vga -> dvi connector than to run dvi -> vga. I could of course be way off the mark and it may just be a cash issue as 15 pin vga d-subs are cheaper than dvi ...

I thought it was on one of the embedded lists I read, I will check there after some sleep.

Re:It's analog

[Tycho]

Then get an AIW 9000 or an AIW 9800. The AIW 9000 has a DVI port and requires no external power. However the AIW 9000 does not support component video out. However with the right cable the DVI port will work with an HDTV with a DVI port. The AIW 9800 has a DVI port, but has the external power requirement. The AIW 9800 also has component video out. Like the AIW 9000, with the right cable the DVI port will work with an HDTV with a DVI port. Samsung sells a 26" direct view HDTV with a DVI port and a built in ASTC/QAM/NTSC tuner. The Samsung TV shouldn't be too hard to find. If you want an AIW 9000 be quick about it. The replacement for the AIW 9000, the AIW 9200 only has a VGA port. However the AIW 9000 is still generally available.

Beware

[vandan]

ATI's Linux drivers suck arse.
I get better performance under UT2004 from my R100 ( Radeon 7200 ) with the open-source DRI drivers than I get from my R350 ( Radeon 9600 ) with ATI's drivers.

Honestly, you are better off with a Radeon 7200.

Re:Beware

[ElPresPufferfish]

Use the 3.2.8 drivers for speed, 3.9.0 for compatibility. I hate the drivers as well, but the 3.2.8 set isn't unbearably slow

Re:Beware

[identity0]

What's more, their GUI "Media Center" program sucks, too. Very bad interface with unlabeled cryptic buttons and clunky layout... Not that I'm satisfied with any video player's UI, they all seem to have been made by bad artists with no experience in UI design.

Do you know how good their drivers are for video stuff? What's a good capture card for Linux?

Re:Beware

[FreonTrip]

Last time I checked Xi Graphics' 3D Accelerated X had excellent support for most of the Radeons. If you're willing to pony up a little cash, it's well worth looking into.

Good card, but it wont work with MythTV

[Cavalkaf]

IIRC, the ATI All-In-Wonder cards don't work with MythTV under Linux.

Re:Good card, but it wont work with MythTV

[isbhod]

you do remember correctly, this is oh so sadly true. The AIW cards are good cards under linux, i just wish they would work with myth tv. But on the other hand, there are cheapo tv cards out there that cost less than $50.00 that work beautifully with myth tv. I was able to to build a cheap PVR using myth, and 50.00 dollar card 258mb ram, 200 GB HD, and an AMD 2700 for less than $400.00, runs great.... although the tv card has no tv out so to watch what i record i have to network in the computer with the AIW card and then send that output to the tv. but hey if it wasn't complicated i probably would not have built it ;)

RTFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

This recent ATI AIW adaptor has a beautiful purple "break-out" box that interfaces all different cabling to RCA, Composite, SVGA Analog, and DVI.

In the words of Theo The Rat, Theo Du Ratd:
RTFA! RTFA!

I didn't RTFA, but I know I'm right because I worship the god Theo The Rat by exclaiming RTFA! to every jerk as myself. ;-)

Watercooling?

[tyrr]

If fan noise irritates you why not put a quiet fan on the chip yourself or better yet upgrade to watercoolin system.

Never, EVER Buy One of These Refurbed!

[ThePDW]

I bought a refurbed 9600 xt AIW for an XPC that I was building for a girl and I thought I could save her some money so I bought a refurb from Newegg. It doesn't come with anything but the card. No, remote, no FM antenna, no proprietary cable. I ended up spending $40 ($20 for the cable $20 for express shipping) buying the proprietary cable that you have to use to connect the card to a monitor. Even then, the tv part of the card didn't work and had to be disabled so the computer wouldn't crash. So, I hope I can keep someone from making the same mistake I made!

Re:Never, EVER Buy One of These Refurbed!

[Anonymous Coward]

how they heck to you disable the tv part of the card? just no connect it or install the multimedia center?

I agree refurbs are bad.. no cables

Re:Never, EVER Buy One of These Refurbed!

[ThePDW]

I just disabled them via the hardware manager in windows. Also one other thing, these are A PAIN to get in to an XPC, you have to do a fair amount of nerve wracking bending of the card to get it in!

Re:Never, EVER Buy One of These Refurbed!

[Anonymous Coward]

You were close. The moral of this story is "never build a computer for a girl you like".

Re:Never, EVER Buy One of These Refurbed!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I hope I can keep someone from making the same mistake I made!
The only people who would make that mistake are the kind that cannot read a newegg item profile. If they can't read that what makes you think they can read your post :)

Re:Never, EVER Buy One of These Refurbed!

[losycompresion]

Um...so after bending the card is ways it was not meant to be bent, it didn't work right. I am so shocked, abuse an item and it breaks, what cheap junk.

Re:Never, EVER Buy One of These Refurbed!

[Anonymous Coward]

But did you get laid?

Anonymous ?

[Anonymous Coward]

or shameless self promotion ?

Oh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you think having a relationship would allow you to save *more*??? ;)

No, you RTFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

The purple breakout box does NOT have DVI, which is all-useful now in connecting to digital televisions and plasma monitors, that which are useful outputs for a HPC.

So, is it obsolete yet?

[__aatgod8309]

I'd be curious to know when this review was written. The review date given is July 3rd 2004, but it states "The driver CD comes with CATALYST 4.0, RemoteWonder 1.6, MMC 8.1 and an up to date version of ATI's DVD decoder. 4.4, 2.3 and 9.0 are available respectively, so a quick trip to ATI's website will get you current."

The current Catalyst version is 4.6 (posted on June 9th, almost a month ago), and i think with the average time between Catalyst releases being around a month (i'm sure someone can correct me if i'm wrong - probably loudly, and with much flaming) that would make the review a month or two old... (and there are newer versions of RemoteWonder (2.3.0.1 posted 3/19/04) and MMC (9.1, posted 06/24/04) as well.)

And yes, i'm well aware i'm being difficult, pedantic and/or contrary.

Re:So, is it obsolete yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the name of the site. 'hexus.net'

full of paid-for reviews by people who know less about PCs that your grandmother.

Better solution for XPC -

[Proudrooster]

Since most XPC's have 2 slots (AGP + PCI) to me this makes more sense.
For a Dual Display with Video Capture, get this combo.

• Hauppage PVR-250
• ATI RADEON 9600SE Video Card, 128MB DDR, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP

For triple display, Dual VGA and TV Set, with FM radio get this combo.

• Hauppage PVR-350
• ATI RADEON 9600SE Video Card, 128MB DDR, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP

I was hoping to see more discussion on this thread. I have an XPC and am borrowing a PVR-250 and it works really well. Only a 10-20% hit on a 3.0GHz CPU when recording at DVD quality. To stress the system I started 3 FTP downloads (3 MB/s), started burning a CD, streamied a 128k station with Winamp, editing pics with Adobe Photoshop, watched previously recorded show, and recorded TV with the Hauppage card. The system worked fine. I thought for sure that the single IDE disk would bottleneck, but no problems.

IMHO, the ATI AIW 9600XT is out because it doesn't have hardware MPEG compression and it has another fan to make noise. I think the playback with the AIW is easier on the CPU since the overlay happens on the card, however recording must hammer the system CPU . Can anyone tell us what CPU/Disk I/O look like while recording at DVD quality on the ATI?

Actually, ATI does HW encoding

[Proudrooster]

Excerpt from Viperlair It looks like the ATI does do H/W MPEG.

Usually found in high end pro-sumer video cards, the AIW 9600 Pro brings hardware MPEG-2 decoding and MPEG-2 encoding to the consumer level. The Cobra Engine is capable of Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform (iDCT), which is really a fancy way of saying it can decode MPEG-2 streams with minimal CPU usage. This can make a difference when viewing DVDs on your PC, as you no longer have to shop for a dedicated DVD decoder, and no longer have to rely on software based decoding.

Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), or MPEG-2 encoding, is done in hardware, which for casual video editing buffs, means less work on your CPU. ATI claims a maximum of 20-25% of the encoding process can be taken off the CPU, which could result in less time needed to encode a movie file, or at least, more CPU processing power to perform other tasks.

Videosoap is a feature found within the Cobra Engine that cleans up the image. It isn't designed for MPEGs you already have, but rather, it uses four filters to clean up the signal coming in from the input video. Other than cleaning up the image, it also serves to reduce the file size since noise isn't something that can easily be compressed, so with less noise, you'll end up with smaller files.

This card sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

No Linux support = peice of junk product from lazy mfgr who can't write drivers worth crap.

Re:This card sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

from lazy mfgr who can't write drivers worth crap.

Aren't they supposed to be written as opposed to crap or did you want crap drivers? I lament: hope you're not turning gay, because your English skills surely isn't sounding strait.

The question is........

[flafish]

why not just buy the ATI AIW 9600XT and get the real thing? The writer states he would give the one tested a 10 out of 10 if it were under 200 pounds. Picked up one today ( ATI ) for $219.99 so he should be able to give it the 10.

not an ATI card

[juventasone]

I can't believe no slashdotters have pointed out timothy's mistake of calling it "ATi's newest All-In-Wonder". This is not an ATI card, it is a GeCube card. The reviewer gets it right in all occasions, as does the poster. ATI does indeed make All-In-Wonders, but they don't make them all. While I see this mistake all the time, I don't expect it from any self-respecting geek with any hardware knowledge.

CPU utilization is covered...

[EconolineCrush]

In this review: http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/aiw-personalc inema/index.x?pg=1 , which also features the NVIDIA Personal Cinema FX 5700. Sorry, no disk utilization, though.

Damn!

[Anonymous Coward]

My secret ATI propoganda...foiled again!

Buy ATI, if you know what's good for you. ATI is insurance that your computer will work at its optimum. You need ATI-insurance, or else... ;-(

mod him up, he's right, ati linux support is sad

[Anonymous Coward]

tho ati cards at least has opensource dri drivers for the ati 9200 and older series

Re:mod him up, he's right, ati linux support is sa

[Anonymous Coward]

Which don't work with x.org or Xfree 4.4.

TV on the computer

[hsmith4234]

So you spend 300 plus dollars to get a 17-inch TV? A lot of places have larger screen TV's for less money.