ATi's New All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 128MB

KillaBee writes "ATi has taken the wraps off their latest addition to their 'All In Wonder' product line of graphics cards with TV and video editing functionality. The All In Wonder Radeon 8500 128MB card, reviewed here, has ATi's fastest Radeon 8500 core along with a full 128MB of 300MHz DDR SDRAM (600MHz DDR). This is ATi's 'Swiss Army Knife' card that brings with it very competitive 3D graphics performance as well."

Re:PCI?

[gricholson75]

I have a PCI version of the AIW Radeon in a p3 667 and it works very well. These cards are all over for around $120.

Review skimps on the video recording features

[Brento]

As an All-In-Wonder Radeon owner, just want to clear up the things the article glosses over. You can't set it to record the same show no matter what time it comes on, you can't view listings more than 7 days in advance, and unlike a Tivo, it won't record similar shows for you. This is not set-it-and-forget-it software, and people need to stop comparing it to Tivo. It's much closer to a VCR than to Tivo: you have to manually program it, and it's just not that smart. (The quality's outstanding, though.)

Re:DAMN!

[twilight30]

Some points to mention:

• It's available to US & Cdn. end users only
• You get more if you supply them with old ATI cards, I believe (about $50 US/Cdn, depending on where you are).

The FAQ is available here [ati.com] and applies to both PC and Mac architectures.

Re:No more ATI for me

[Coolfish]

hear hear. Just like Matrox, I thought they had some inovative technology that other companies weren't really interested in (the Rainbow Runner G, Dualhead, etc. for example). But the simple fact remains that just like Matrox, ATI has awful customer support, and terrible drivers. Then, once you figure "okay, this technology has had time to mature, i can expect some solid drivers", tada, they discontinue the product.

So what do you do? Get a video card that has all these snazzy new features, but you bring it home and the drivers don't even suppor it yet? (my Ati Radeon VE refused to do both monitors at acceptable resolutions, and it took them a long time to even acknowledge the issue). I've figured I'll go with a company that at least appears to support their cards properly, Nvidia. I'm looking forward to my next upgrade.

Don't buy it! Drivers STINK

[steppin_razor_LA]

I am the "proud" owner of a Radeon All In Wonder. I dropped close to $300 on the card. I bought it hoping to set up a home theatre PC. I was looking forward to experimenting with broadcasting the video via 802.11 to the downstairs office so that my GF could watch while working.. etc.

ATI totally caved to Microsoft and only supports their "latest" video capture API (DirectShow). Well guess what even though DirectShow has been out for a long time, there doesn't seem to be a lot of support for it -- even from Microsoft. So if you want to use NetMeeting or Windows Media Server or Real Server -- you can go suck an egg.

The video capture software they bundle it seems to capture into a proprietary MPEG2 format that doesn't play on other computers. If you want to share something you captured, you need to re-encode it.

There are third party applicaitons available -- I think that FlashMPEG can do capture for it now.

All in all, I am *REALLY* disappointed with the card. The hardware seems fine, but the software & support just blow.

Re:But does it work in Linux?

[bcjanes]

It all should work, except for 3d. The ATI cards have had excellent 2d support in Xfree for a while now, and progress is being made on the 3d support.

From what I can gather, the mach 64 series, and Radeon 8500 series should have 3d support by Xfree 4.3 or 4.4

I certianly hope so, they are excellent cards IMHO, and the only real player left for open-source accellerated 3d.

Yes, I know that Nvidia makes drivers available for linux for the Gforce series of chips, but they are propietary only, and not officially supported. Try calling up Nvidia's support line and asking for help.

Nvidia won't release their specs so the Xfree project can't easily write good drivers for them. I don't know about you, but I really don't want a kernel level driver that is closed source mingling with my kernel. How are you supposed to fix it if it breaks something?

Trade-In Program

[jimmcq]

You can get up to $150 off a All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 128MB AGP through ATI's Trade-Up Program [ati.com].

Basically if you order the card through them you get an instant $50 rebate... Then when you send in an old ATI card or even a different brand of graphic card, they will send you a $100 rebate.

Re:Can I throw out my TV yet?

[andrewjnr]

It come's with a remote dude... A radio USB remote no less, you can hook it up downstairs, and watch it on the TV upstairs, with no loss of control.. I'll be looking into getting a PCI version this.

Re:How is the Linux support?

[fwankypoo]

I'm not sure how much suppor there is for the video capture features of the card under Linux right now. However, ATI releases all the specs to their cards so that people like the DRI project can develop drivers for them (which is much cooler IMHO than NVidia's closed drivers). So, while it may take longer for the drivers to mature, they will most likely be free software.

A little off your question...
I've seen a few people complaining about their AIW Radeon's, etc. I just have to say that (owning an AIW 7500) the drivers are much more mature than what they talk about. I've had no problems using the capture functions, no problems with any game (D3D or OpenGL) and it DOES encode to non-proprietary formats (MPEG2, AVI, etc) to allow for editing w/out conversion.

The quality is fantastic (I can't wait till I get somewhere where I have reception). I recommend getting one of these card if TV+good 3D acceleration is your bag.

Re:How is the Linux support?

[eimaj]

Unfortunately there is no OpenGL support [sourceforge.net] for the 8500 under Linux.

I was disappointed that ATI doesn't appear to be willing to fund 8500 development through Tungsten Graphics [tungstengraphics.com] like they did a few years ago [rageunderground.com] (when TG was called Precision Insight).

I was just in the market to buy and new card, and as much as I wanted an ATI, I ended up buying a GeForce3. I don't like that NVidia's stuff is a closed binary implementation, but at least they take the Linux market seriously enough to support it.

Re:How is the Linux support?

[eimaj]

I just remembered, it is possible to buy [xig.com] OpenGL support for the 8500, but the driver costs as much as my GeForce3 did. :P

ATI? Yuck.

[topham]

Aside from it taking me 3 months to get my ATI card working as it SHOULD...

(All-in-Wonder Rage 128) I finally can get the TV-tuner working and watch TV while I use dual monitors.

Never did figure out HOW I GOT IT WORKING.
(This under Win2K)

ATI drivers *SUCK*. Their DVD support SUCKS (I have a standalone MPEG2 decoder card, I've had it since I was using a Pentium 166, it has always played DVDs flawlessly.) On my Pentium III ATI's DVD support glitches now and then.

I was better off under W95 with my Pentium 166, & creative Labs decoder.

I will not consider an ATI card again until they improve their driver support and pull their head out of their ass. (Mpeg2 encoding should be done in hardware, it takes a Pentium III to do it in software, and you can't do much else...)

Re:Don't buy it! Drivers STINK

[WhaDaYaKnow]

I bought an 8500DV late last year because of it's soon to be released component output cable. It was touted as the best solution for home entertainment systems because of the component video output, not available in any other graphics card.

We are now half a year further and no component output cable. The FAQ dully states:

Q12: Is component output enabled with the initial shipment? When is it available? How do I get component output?

A12: No, component output will not be available with the initial shipment. It will be available in 2002. You will be able to purchase an upgrade package from ATI with an adapter to connect your graphics card to your HDTV through YPbPr.

Great, so that will be, what, 31st December 2002?

It's amazing how companies get away with these kind of false promises. Several emails asking for a more specific timeframe went unanswered (after requiring me to go through a rediculous amount of trouble finding a way to actually get a proper email address).

An other important thing to mention that I keep running into: NEVER trust information on a web-page. The company will modify it without any record of the previous version (only a few weeks and it's out of Google cache as well), leaving you with no prove whatsoever.

Re:No more ATI for me

[Tim Browse]

As a game developer, I can back this up re: driver problems. We had a crash bug in the Matrox G400 OpenGL driver, and supplied Matrox with an example program.

They then asked us what our program was doing - we thought "Er, aren't you the driver writers? Can't you tell?"

So we gave them the source in the end, including some of our engine. Eventually they came back and said that it was a problem, but they wouldn't be fixing it as the G400 was not their latest hardware, and so it had lower priority. They might fix it in the future - maybe.

BTW, at the time, the G400 was the latest card you could buy from Matrox. They basically told us that they wouldn't fix bugs in the drivers for their most recent currently shipping product.

We were not exactly impressed.

Tim

Re:How is the Linux support?

[vawlk]

I agree. I was once an ATI hater too. I used to despise trying to get drivers to work correctly, but unlike many others who are basing their opinions on cards 2 or 3 generations ago, I gave them another chance.

And guess what.

Best hardware purchase I have ever made. The drivers are a TON better than before. They still aren't perfect but they work, and quite well. Updates are now atleast monthly with quite a few "leaks" in between.

Compared to my geforce owning friends, I have no more issues than they have with their drivers, and in some cases less, which is suprising because my card (8500DV) does so much more than play games.

As I sit here, the TV is paused in an overlay window on top of this text area just waiting nicely for me to continue when I am finished.

Sure it takes a leap of faith to "change", especially when a company has wronged you in the past. So how many of you are running AMD?

You never know...your old issues may be holding you back from a truely amazing experience.