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."

Comments

All the info needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Officially, the ALL-IN-WONDER X1800 XL carries an MSRP of $500...

End of Line

Different direction?

[dada21]

Higher resolutions at faster refresh rates is great, but I'm wanting video to head in a different direction. I'm sure I'm not alone.

First, heat efficiency in getting out of control. My MCE runs fairly cool but I needed to fab my own fan brackets. I won't even look at newer video cards if they're running 10 degC hotter. I know more speed generally means more heat but there has to be some techniques to reduce it.

Coupled with the heat problems we're getting annoyingly loud fans on the card. In my theater I've replaced a vidcard because the fan started acting up. Not good.

I'd love to see more support for the newer resolutions out there. My backup projector needs a 960x540 resolution which requires buying Powerstrip. My regular projector requires 1280x720. Even the newest cards I've tested ignore these fairly standard resolutions in their drivers.

I'm not impressed with many on-board video decoders lately. Fuzzy text, artifacts that shoulder occur and (sometimes) color errors.

I'm happy to see ATI releasing these fast cards at cheap prices but I fear that none of the future needs are being planned for.

They should also STOP SCREAMING THEIR PRODUCT NAME.

Re:Different direction?

[iso]

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.

Re:Different direction?

[Spy Hunter]

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.

Printer Friendly

[TubeSteak]

But without the pictures

http://firingsquad.com/print_article.asp?current_s ection=Hardware&fs_article_id=1756

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

Coral Cache link

[The Lerneaen Hydra]

http://firingsquad.com.nyud.net:8090/hardware/ati_ all_in_wonder_x1800_xl/ Coral Cache link

Not enough X's!

[kidcharles]

There are only two X's in this product name. I refuse to buy a video card that only has two X's in it's model number. Give it a name like "ATI XXL 81200X XP X-Treme Edition" and I'll consider forking over my money.

Macrovision

[drxenos]

I've always like the ATI TV tuners. Very easy to use. But I've always hated that their software won't record signals that have Macrovision in them. I had bought an ATI a few years ago to copy my VHS tapes to DVD. When one plays that is protect by Macrovision, the record button disables. Luckily it is (was?) only in the software, and their cards work well with all the open source stuff out there (virtualdub).

Depricating a perfictly good tuner...

[MrRogers2]

I've never really understood the AIW's popularity. While maybe it's nice to have it all on one card, when it comes time to upgrade, which comes along depressingly fast for video, you've got to trash a perfectly working tuner. Why not get the video card and a seperate tuner?

More cost up front? Maybe, but my ATI TV Wonder is still working *years* after its purchase.

But how are the drivers?

[Mr. Flibble]

I own an ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 pro. It is great, when it is working... It is fast, and all the features work well, but updating the drivers and sofware is a nightmare. I really miss the Nvidia unified drivers that I use on work machines.

The problem is that there are 3 files that need to be upgraded with every driver change - and while I understand this, the process is annoying. If a new driver comes out for video, and I install it, but neglect to install the other drivers for the card, the DVD viewing software, and the TV software break.

This, again, is understandable, but the process is annoying. ATI really needs to simplify their driver installation (and hell, having better Linux drivers would be neat too... but that is an aside)

Another review at Bjorn3D

[G3ckoG33k]

The article summarizes: "Quite simply this is the card I would like to put in my MediaPC".

Linux support? HDTV?

[kimvette]

Will it run Linux, or will I be just as screwed on it as I've been with the ATI-TV (ISA), AiW 128 Pro, AiW 7500, AiW8500DV? I'm sure it runs great on Windows, which is great and all, only I want to punt Windows from my system and not have a dual-boot configuration.

Also what is up with offering only analog/NTSC reception on this side of the pond? NTSC broadcasts are supposedly dying soon, so why don't they offer HDTV-capable cards yet? They advertise high-definition output, which is just wonderful, but what's so great about an upsampled NTSC picture?

AiW < VGA + TV

[courtarro]

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!).

All-In-Wonder drivers suck

[realmolo]

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.

OpenBSD/Solaris Support? (Was: Re:Linux/Myth supp?

[quarkscat]

So long as ATI refuses to recognize that there are other OSes that consumers use besides MS Windows Latest & Greatest(TM), I shall continue to avoid purchasing their products. NVIDia is barely better, what with their binary drivers which always seem to be one or more kernel releases behind the times.

I do (really!) hate to have my comments modded to flamebait, but there are actually "OTHER OSes" besides x86 GNU/linux (really, there is!). Without reasonably complete source code drivers available, PPC||MIPS||ARM||other GNU/linux as well as *BSD, Solaris will never stand a chance against the WIntel behemouth.

Barring the possibility of obtaining source code drivers for the latest video cards (or other geeky kit), rather complete hardware documentation should be made available so that the F/OSS community can "roll their own" drivers. Major vendors appear to be so concerned about providing any insight to their hardware designs to their competition that they are forsaking a growing segment of the consumer market.

Recent news regarding MS Windows "rootkits" showing up in heavily DRMed product should illuminate the dangers of reliance upon one convicted monopolistic company "owning" a nearly ubiquitous portion of the market. Those companies that band together in support of a single platform risk alienating their consumer market when "extremely bad things" crop up to destroy that market.

Alternative OSes exist; alternative sources of media/content exist; and alternative hardware exists -- when consumers start voting (in droves) with their cash, the current industry "leaders" will likely be caught by surprise. I suspect that those most surprised will not survive.