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ATI's All-In-Wonder 2006
Anonymous writes "AnandTech's Josh Venning takes a first look at ATI's brand new All-In-Wonder 2006 PCIe video card. Due to hit retail stores sometime this week, the A-I-W 2006 is based on the X1300 series of cards, making it aimed at more budget-based users. AnandTech also compared the A-I-W 2006 to the X1300 Pro to get an idea of where this version of the X1300 line of cards stands."
And because it WILL happen..... =P
Had to get it out of the way for everyone. =D
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
So, for $380 bucks, I can get a GPU card that exceed the computing power available to the NSA in the 1980s? Is that about right?
The video transcoding supports sounds very nice. If I can get hardware-assisted H.264 encoding, I'm all over that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
PCIe.. The e stands for 'express'. PCIexpress is a newer format and is the way PCI/AGP is going now. In fact, getting AGP video cards is getting more and more difficult.
Uh.. notice the little "e" next to PCI in the article and summary? That means it's PCI Express, which is better than AGP and where all high-end graphics cards are going now.
Isn't the MPAA trying to make these things illegal?
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express
Well, somebody had to explain it to me too, at one point. Still, I find it hard to believe you hadn't at least HEARD of it. Graphics cards that use ordinary PCI interfaces are a joke so old it isn't even funny anymore.
So I am not interested in ATI's offering after having trouble with their drivers before. Anyone know if nvidia's equivalent to this is any good?
They can always appease them by including a free Half-Life movie with every card. (Of course, they'll finish it months after the actual free-movie offer, and it'll be choppy once every few minutes, but I'll still like it.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Oops, my bad. I missed that little e. Happens when you try to post from your laptop laying in bed suffering from a nasty cold.
Not "PCI", but "PCIe" aka PCI-Express -- big difference.
"AGP, much as it's been a faithful companion for many a year, is a dead end. While SLI systems may not outperform their older siblings, one has to take into account that PCI-Express, SATA and DDR2 were not chosen as future PC standards for their immediate advantages, but for their open-ended architecture, which opens up avenues of development that will eventually lead to much better performance than AGP/EIDE systems."
(Taken from the first hit on a quick google search.)
My contempt for the behavior and beliefs of the two major political parties cannot be adequately expressed in 120 chara
PCI express uses the concept of a "lane". Each lane is capable of 250MB/s in each direction at the same time, for a total of 500MB/s. A x1 PCIe card has 1 lane, and a x2 has two, and so on. I think the video card mentioned above is a x16 card, capable of 16 lanes, or 4GB/s in each direction, or 8GB/s total. I believe the spec for 32 lanes is also already set.
The cool thing about pcie is that it can be used for not only video but for everything else. Plus each lane isn't shared across the slots. So you have 8GB/s for your video card, and 500MB/s for your Gigabit (100MB/s) ethernet card, and another 8GB/s for a SANS disk array interface card, and so on.
A quick at the ATI site reveals they don't include any way to control a set top box. How about leaving off the "125 channel tuner" and adding a simple IR dongle?
Excuse me this is a video card.
Since when a $380 video card is targeted to budget users? Maybe poor CEO's on a budget, but I mean come on.
I've the feeling people overstimate the importance of a video card in the overall PC experience. I have a what should be crap of the crappiest, got few years ago for less than 40 bucks: GeForce 4 MX.
Yet, it runs Quake 3 smooth at 1280x1024, Doom 3 ok in 800x600 and HalfLife just fine in 1024x768 for playback.
Also the 2D performance virtually doesn't matter anymore on any of the new videocards, them all being "fast enough that you won't notice any difference".
I'd never spend $380 on a video card. Plus I bet this will be rebranded and sold in the TRUE budget range around 40-50 USD just 3 of years from now.
PCIe or PCI-Express is the new bus that has began to replace AGP in most new motherboards and PCs being sold today.
Next year, it will become more difficult to get a non-budget, non-midrange, 6800GT or X800 class AGP card as both nVidia and ATI have now shifted manufacturing to their PCIe cards such as the nVidia 7800 or ATI X1800 class cards.
does it run linux?!
Still using my Voodoo 5500 AGP.
It's a shame they had to close up shop and sell their IP to nVidia.
My other graphics card is an ATI 9700 Pro
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
getting ready for Vista...
Right now, most of the major sites seem to focus solely on windows drivers and windows specific features. I realize that its 95% windows world, but Linux people do purchase a decent amount of hardware. Because of Nvidia's decent Linux support over the years, when I look at graphics cards I don't even bother looking to see what ATI has to offer.
ATI and NVidia are famous for being the two worst companies to buy from. Some links:
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Calling the product an All-In-Wonder 2006 is incorrect, I think. Pretty sure the X1800 XL version will sell by a different name, as I have an All-In-Wonder 2006, and it is simply a Radeon 9600 unit in a fancy new box. Not in the same league as the new X1800 card. The 2006 is still for sale at Best Buy, so I don't think the new card will take over the same name. The only negative comment I have about the ATI drivers is don't load the Vista driver, or you'll be reloading Vista.
It would be nice if ATI kept the naming of the products/chips in some sort of easily understandable order. nVidia has it right, 66xx, 78xx, etc. It matches up with the GeForce n number system to some degree. ATI X1800, what is that? How does it compare with a Radeon 9600?
It seems we're getting into an IE vs Netscape numbering race.
My brother's ATI Built card is messing up, and it's under warranty, or at least I think it is, but every time I fill out the long form on ATI's site I get an email days later "invalid serial number." So I've filled it out twice now, but ATI doesn't offer a simple human email response from support@ati.com.
ATI is also requiring each card purchased to be registered for warranty service within 30 days of purchase. No thanks, I paid for it, that's my registration. Last time I checked ATI had a 5 year warranty which is great, they were prompt with my card. (nVidia doesn't make retail cards so it's all 3rd party support; eVGA, Jaton, etc.)
I don't want this to sound like an nVidia fanboi post, but ATI has lost me as a customer until they pull their heads out of the sand. Until then, I'll enjoy downloading a single driver file from nVidia that works with almost every chip they make.
KISS! This is as exotic as the long names AMD uses to code it's processors, and for the end users this ATI numbering scheme is confusing.
GeForce's scheme makes a bit more sense, at least to me, since my GeForce 4 was marketed as a GeForce 4000. Retroactive marketing?
They've already crippled the AiW with Macrovision detection. I own the last of the series [so I've read] that supports a "patch" to fix the bug that disables the record button when a Macrovision VHS tape is detected.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
as the Owner of a ATI 9600proAIW i can say without a doubt if i had it to do over again I would have got a seperate tv card (Hauppauge) ... the ATI MMC is one of the most Irritating pieces of software I have ever used... with the exception of the bundles GemStar Guide plus software (that routinely has the mouse cursor disapear making it next to impossible to select a program)
.... really bad if you are using it say with a consol cause the audio is really off... I had to reinstall and go back to the older MMC software.
ATI recently dropped it's warranty to 1yr from 3yrs (my AIW died after 13 mos and I had to RMA it) so I would be alittle hessitant to buy another.
additionally ATI decided to make the Audio digital awhile ago in it's mmc suite... problem is that w/ the 9600 cards it makes the audio skip or out of sync
I have spent SOOO much time dicking w/ my AIW card trying to get it to work the way I want...just not worth the headache....
but the warranty switch to 1yr everyone should keep in mind when considering this card.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
If you guys actually bothered to fully read the article, it's the X1800XL AIW that's going for $380. The AIW 2006(aka the X1300 AIW) has a MSRP of $199 and will likely go for less.
Am I the only one who looks at these "reviews" and gets a little uneasy about products getting plugged on slashdot? "What's wrong with that," you say. Well, I'm not sure, but it just doesn't sit well with me.
Maybe not even for all that long. PCIe has definitely made inroads much faster then I expected it to. I figured we'd see the market split between AGP/PCIe cards / motherboards for at least another year.
Anyone remember how long PCI and VESA co-existed in the marketplace? Or maybe AGP vs VESA is the better comparison?
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
I don't think they plug the products that much. Honestly, if you invented a new tech product on Slashdot, would you feel good about letting the unwashed hordes of Slashdot review your product? I don't think there's a single marketer who would think Slashdot was a great place to get product reviews.
So really, they post these articles to give people the real scoop? They post these articles as filler space? Personally, I like seeing these kind of articles just so I can see all the different ways people can complain about something. The user responses here will always be better than a "showcase" review site that doesn't allow criticism.
More often than not, it's not the article that's so important, it's the discussion that follows after. News for nerds and stuff that matters doesn't always happen in the writeup, or even in the linked URL.
Come on! Yes, the software does a fine job, as long as I don't want to do anything else with the computer while it is recording (including while buffering live TV). This is nothing more than the same old AIW with a new GPU. The least they could do is get rid of that GEM+ guide software. Gotta love no automatic updates for the TV guide and all.
If they are going to tie up the TV capture with the GPU (so I can't upgrade one and not the other) the least they could do is put some real capture hardware on it.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Insightful response Stoutlimb. To let you in on the irony, I was only posting that crap to plug my site in my .sig :P
Computers built with in the last 3 years, are all still good, that would represent what, 300million PCs?
I know they want PCIE to take over, but dont just dump the AGp just yet, its not like AGP speeds are ISA or
really really crap, 8x is still good enough.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Dude, you dont add bidir speeds to get one speed
Thats just nuts.
Its just full duplex 250MB/s, where as traditional interfaces are all half duplex.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
hmmmm... not really sure why you had such a bad experience. I have owned the AiW series since the very first one, and have gone through the Rage Pro and am now using the Rage 128 version with XP. I used the first version with Win98 with no probs, and used the Rage Pro version with 98, 2000 and XP, all with no problems. Upgraded to the AiW Rage 128 when I got my Athlon XP1700+ back in 2002 and have used it with both 2000 and XP, again, no problem. I also used the Rage Pro version on my Linux box for a few years. My experience with this series has been pretty smooth.
-f.
...and remember in your brain boggle, wrong starts with a wubble-u.
On the other hand, if manufacturers actually used the complaints of Slashdotters as a basis for product improvement, we might start seeing more products with fewer faults and useless features. Think of it as a free, obsessive-compulsive quality control department.
I mean come on, editors/submitters. You could at least include a line in the blurb that would say *where* the card is sold - you know, different TV standards/digital TV formats/HDTV/connectors used around the world and all?
My guess would be that there won't be a DVB-T/C model of the card with 1024x576i RGB SCART output any time soon, although it would be sweet. No, we don't have HDTV over here.
The support at ATI is horrible. That Canada phone call is expensive - and then there's no guaranteed answer. The support services / ticket # arrangement on the ATI website is well organized, but communication seems to get lost in the shuffle. (That might require reading).
By the way before you condemn ATI support as I have, read the directions before you go slapping cards in your box.
Too bad ATI didnt get it out soon for the holiday. THey might have made mo'money. chris
To "err" is to be human. To "moo" is to be bovine.
Ordinary PCI graphics cards are nice for doing multihead on less high end systems. You only need one really good card for the screen you play games on (which can go in your AGP slot), then a bunch of cheap PCI ones to get that lovely monitor space.
I am trolling
So I bought a MoBo over the summer. Got a P IV hand-me-down from my brother-in-law (2.66 GHz, IIRC). Bought a 512 MB stick of RAM, and 80 GB disk, and a second-hand monitor. My brother helped install Mandriva Linux on it. It's a decent little machine, and will take over from my aging iMac shortly. It's never done Windows, so all that matters is Linux support.
;-) What graphic card would be good?
It has PCI and AGP 4x-8x slots. Say I wanted to get TiVo-like capabilities, and maybe better frame-rate in TuxRacer
you'd pick up a pvr150/250/500 for the tivo/TV recording end of things, and on the linux front I think an agp Nvidia 6600 would be nice, if you have budget restraints an Nvidia FX 5200 would be a cheap bottom end card to shlop in there.
You didn't mention if you'd be hooking it up to a TV (and if it woudl be a SDTV or HDTV) so that's a very general recommendation...
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
besides that it's PCIe, is that it finally has hardware MPEG2 encoding...
Although I think I'd still prefer to get a regular PCIe 16x video card and a separate pci-e 1x ATI power color theater 550 instead of a smooshed allintowonder... but that's just my personal preference (from previous experience)
The other important thing is that other 3rd party software pick up and support the card, otherwise you're stuck with the included - blech - software... IMHO
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
At least around when I was looking at the FX 5xxx series there were cards that supported TV-in from NVidia. Look for the "Personal Cinema" line as they would have the functionality you mention
Realistically though, the reason I didn't go with the "personal cinema" line is that for the price given you might as well spend the extra couple bucks and get a seperate TV-in card. That way when you upgrade you're extra-cost TV features out the door.
Still, if you're still interested the 5000 line had one such as this and I'd imagine the newer lines do as well.
It's really bad review journalism that so many reviews, like this one, are done in a virtual vacuum. None of a product's features or characteristics have meaning as an absolute... they're only meaningful *relative* to other similar competing products. That makes perfect sense, since even human intelligence isn't and can't (yet?) be measured as an absolute. Neither has meaning except relative to a peer.
I'd like to see AnandTech and all other sites offering things called reviews to save their words and efforts until they can do the job right, with a full comparative head-to-head spread. "Reviews" in a vacuum like this raise an obvious question of motivation: is this an actual objective review, or merely a verbose conspiratorial marketing ad?
Mark
In the past I have suffered numerous compatibility issues with nVidia cards and software, mostly games, and am looking forward to the new offering from ATI. Especially anything offering performance as well as a low price. I have several PC's at home and cannot always afford the high-end upgrade options and this new card looks like it will suit the needs of my general purpose machines and allow me to still afford the best card for my primary gaming PC.