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ATI All-In-Wonder X1800 XL Review
Timmus writes "With the release of the X1800 series last month, it was only a matter of time before ATI announced a new All-In-Wonder card that took advantage of it. Today Firingsquad has a review of the new board, the All-In-Wonder X1800 XL. The card features all the multimedia capabilities of previous AIW cards, giving you TV viewing and recording, timeshifting, and of course gaming. Video capture shots are provided as well."
But without the pictures
s ection=Hardware&fs_article_id=1756
http://firingsquad.com/print_article.asp?current_
Just thought I'd point out the first thing I wanted to know:
Just below the ALL-IN-WONDER X1800 XL lies the ALL-IN-WONDER X800 XL (PCI-E) and ALL-IN-WONDER X800 XT (AGP), which both carry a pricetag of $400. For the mainstream market, ATI then provides the ALL-IN-WONDER 2006 (AGP) and ALL-IN-WONDER X600 PRO, both of these boards officially carry an MSRP of $200.
Not everyone has a PCI-E mobo, and I assume this one isn't AGP
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
http://firingsquad.com.nyud.net:8090/hardware/ati_ all_in_wonder_x1800_xl/ Coral Cache link
The article summarizes: "Quite simply this is the card I would like to put in my MediaPC".
If you're looking at the high-end All-in-Wonder for an HTPC, you're looking in the wrong place. This is their top-end card that's primarily meant for gaming. It's like complaining that your sports car doesn't get 55 miles per gallon.
If you want an HTPC All-in-Wonder, you should be looking at something like the All-in-Wonder 2006. It's passively cooled, and has the same tuner bits as the last few All-in-Wonder cards. It works in MCE too.
As for resolutions, my ATI X700 (gaming PC) and All-in-Wonder 2006 (HTPC) both support 1280x720 (it's a pretty standard resolution). I'm not sure about 960x540, but I bet you could set that as a custom resolution in Catalyst Control Center.
And for what it's worth, ATI has been calling it an "All-in-Wonder" (not "ALL IN WONDER") for a while now, so it's only this review that's "screaming" the product name, not ATI.
As the owner of two older AiW cards, I stopped buying AiWs because it just doesn't make fiscal sense to consistently upgrade your TV tuner with your VGA card. The tuner features improve more slowly than gaming cards, and most of the study in this article covers the card's in-game performance, with TV tuning and its quality mentioned as a side note. Personally, I'd rather go with a cutting-edge gaming card for VGA, and a separate tuner for TV, since I won't be forced to part with either if I decide to upgrade the other. Additionally, the tuner chipsets in the AiW often have little 3rd-party support in the drivers, forcing users to use one piece of software to handle TV (ATI's Multimedia Center), often with little support in Linux (I know that MythTV dislikes most of the older AiWs, and I doubt this one will change that). Do yourself a favor and buy a TV Wonder instead (or, of course, a non-ATI product!).
Everyone knows this. The hardware is nice, but the software package and drivers are HORRIBLE. Yeah, you can get other software to capture video with, but you lose a lot of "proprietary" features of the ATI cards.
Not to mention ATIs notorious "we'll never release updated drivers for any new operating systems" policy when it comes to their AIW cards. I can almost guarantee that when Windows Vista hits, the TV features of this card won't work on it. Ever.
Honestly, you're better of picking up one of the Hauppage cards if you really want to have TV features. They're better, better drivers, and widely supported by all kinds of third-party software.
On NVIDIA Quadro cards if you drill down through the control panel screens you can set fine details of your resolution and refresh rate down to the timing of various parts of the video signal. I've successfully output 1080i from a Quadro using this panel. I believe GeForce cards can do this too, but perhaps with not quite as much fine control or high-refresh performance.
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