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Graphics Software Hardware

ATI's All-In-Wonder 2006 121

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pretty-pictures dept.
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."
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ATI's All-In-Wonder 2006 More

ATI's All-In-Wonder 2006

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  • Mmmhmm. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by imboboage0 ( 876812 ) <imboboage0@gmail.com> on Thursday December 22, 2005 @08:57PM (#14323710) Homepage
    I am an nvidia guy. I've always liked them over ATi, mainly because of driver support (...but does it run linux? =P) However, I have seen a lack of an AiW type of thing here on this side of the fence. Don't get me wrong, I love my 6600GT. It was an excellent choice for a budget gaming card. However, I am sure many people (HTPC builders, casual users using it for video, etc.) like the AiW very much. It has always seemed to be a great concept that sold well. This time however, ATi took it a step further. They have introduced this AiW series on the budget end of things. This was a VERY smart business move and I predict it will be taken well by the community as a whole.

    And because it WILL happen..... =P
    • [INSERT FANBOY NVIDIA/ATI RANT HERE]


      • Had to get it out of the way for everyone. =D
    • I'd love an AiW for my box... the ATI Linux support just isn't there yet.

      • Re:Mmmhmm. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 )
        AiW linux support is even worse than normal ATI linux support - the AIWs use some completely orthogonal approach that means they don't work at all like a normal capture board - as such, nobody supports their capture abilities at all.
      • Does anyone know if they took out the software lag that they inserted into the newer versions? I've had an AiW for a few years now and it used to work perfectly, but now you cannot play a game using it because there is .5-1s lag between what happens and what is displayed.
    • I dunno about that. The largest impact would probably be a cheaper Windows MC computer that comes with this card pre-installed.

    • Re:Mmmhmm. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ark42 ( 522144 ) <slashdot@@@morpheussoftware...net> on Thursday December 22, 2005 @09:10PM (#14323794) Homepage
      I've owned a few All-in-Wonders and I can say first-hand that support is horrible. The first All-in-Wonder was never supported under Windows 2000 or higher as anything other then a basic video card. Forget watching TV unless you want to downgrade to Windows ME or lower! The card wasn't even that old when Windows 2000 came out either. When you are using them on the right OS and with the newest drivers, they still tend to crash quite a bit, even the new Radeon All-in-Wonders under XP are quite unreliable. I also have an original Rage II+ and a Rage 128Pro All-in-Wonder, and don't care for any of them.

      The worst of it is, you can't upgrade to a better 3D card without re-buying the TV tuner features again and again, since if you use them as a secondary card (PCI versions) the TV features don't work! I tend to upgrade my video card and CPU a lot more often than I need to upgrade me TV-in ability. I've since switched to stand-alone generic PCI tuner cards, which work much better, and don't get in the way of upgrading my main AGP or PCI-express video card when I need to play newer 3D games.

      I've also used nVidia cards since the TNT2, and the drivers have *always* been great. I've never had a single bit of trouble with any nVidia card or driver, and I've gone through 5 iterations of GeForce cards on top of the TNT2 now.

      • Re:Mmmhmm. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Thursday December 22, 2005 @09:29PM (#14323866) Homepage
        The worst of it is, you can't upgrade to a better 3D card without re-buying the TV tuner features again and again, since if you use them as a secondary card (PCI versions) the TV features don't work! I tend to upgrade my video card and CPU a lot more often than I need to upgrade me TV-in ability. I've since switched to stand-alone generic PCI tuner cards, which work much better, and don't get in the way of upgrading my main AGP or PCI-express video card when I need to play newer 3D games.

        This is the best point I've ever seen anyone make against the AiW series (or any combined 3D/Capture card, for that matter). Considering that the AiW version [bestbuy.com] of the card [bestbuy.com] can apparently cost over $100 more than the base card, it's definitely something to consider, even without the added headache of the drivers (I had a 9600 AiW running on Win2k for awhile--every reinstall, you had to install the drivers in a very specific order or you didn't show TV on the machine).

      • Re:Mmmhmm. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by HunterZ ( 20035 )
        A couple years ago my former roommate purchased an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP AiW for an XP Pro box he was assembling. We had problems with it from the get-go:
        - First, the TV software for the AiW somehow muted the line in of the sound card while it was running no matter what we tried. We ended up working around it by running the sound outputs from the AiW tuner directly to his speakers (via a switchbox I think, so that he could switch back to using them for normal computer stuff)
        - I tried talking to thei
      • I have the 9600 A-I-W, bought with the intent of making a hybrid PVR and desktop - hooked the TV-out and the on-chip sound to the TV, and used the monitor out with my PC sound.

        Needless to say it didn't work out well. ATI's apalling software couldn't be told to use the secondary sound output device. That's an understandable failure, but pales in comparison to how bad the rest of the platform is - the remote is barely useful and sucks the batteries (and is a headache to find patches for), the TV schedule app

        • Re:Mmmhmm. (Score:3, Informative)

          by enrico_suave ( 179651 )
          Although I strongly suggest to anyone rolling their own PVR to get a dedicated standalone hardware encoding tuner card... The previous poster could get some more mileage out of his 9600AIW with better 3rd party PVR software like BeyondTV.

          You might also try Media Portal (and open source windows alternative that's based/forked from the XBox Media Center project)

          e.
      • I owned the Pro, the 32MB version, and the 8500DV which I'm using right now. I was happy with all of them, but I think how they didn't write drivers for other OSes was a really shoddy thing to do to customers. Fortunately I bought them all 2nd hand when they were inexpensive.

        I'm most happy with the 8500DV's Remote Wonder control, which is cool, and I use it still today. I wish it was a bit nicer in some ways though, maybe the II version is better?

        Anyway, right now my AiW isn't being used to its full pote
      • 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 ye
      • 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.

      • I've been using All-in-Wonders in my primary desktop almost exclusively for the last 9 years. I am currently running an All-In-Wonder Radeon under Windows XP, and it has run impeccably regardless of the driver set I've had installed. I have also owned a Rage 128 Pro All-In-Wonder and an original (Mach64?) All-In-Wonder, both of which I liked well enough to buy their successors. (Never got any of them to work in Linux when they first came out, but ATI has been rather reluctant at releasing proprietary inf
      • From your third link:

        For instance, what should we say when the non-free Invidious video driver, the non-free Prophecy database, or the non-free Indonesia language interpreter and libraries, is released in a version that runs on GNU/Linux? Should we thank the developers for this "support" for our system, or should we regard this non-free program like any other--as an attractive nuisance, a temptation to accept bondage, a problem to be solved?

        Gotta love Saint Ignucius :D
      • ... so who do you buy from? I've never had a problem, even with linux drivers for nvidia. A pain in the ass, yes, but at least they support linux.
    • NVidia on Linux? You should know that it's almost as bad as AIW on Linux (damn, there was supposed to be a point somewhere there)

      Oh, yeah, NVidia won't open source their drivers, that was it. Although I don't game enough to care (using a 32Mb NVidia PCI card).
      • NVidia won't open source their drivers

        Could someone please explain to me what exactly this would accomplish? I understand that it would be possible then to include in distros and such, but why does it matter so much? Yes, it is a hassle to use the binary, but what would be SO MUCH better about the open source drivers? Not trying to be a troll, I just don't understand why it is so important.

        Thank you!
        • Advantages:
          • Kernel developers would support kernel problems from people who have nvidia.ko loaded (I don't blame them for not wanting to hear about problems that may have been caused by the binary module).
          • Support for non x86 platforms (IIRC, NVidia only releases x86 binary drivers).
          • Enhancement of the drivers by kernel developers (for free!).
          • More compatitble with kernel changes (i.e., updated with the change).
          • Support for older cards nVidia may not want to expend resources supporting.
          • Going with the spirit of t
    • 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

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday December 22, 2005 @08:59PM (#14323725)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • 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?

      Negative. for 380 bucks, you can pay a psychic to tell you that it was a good idea you didn't waste your money on a GPU so you could brag about having more computing power than the NSA in the 1980s. =P

  • Contraband! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JakiChan ( 141719 ) on Thursday December 22, 2005 @09:04PM (#14323762)
    Isn't the MPAA trying to make these things illegal?
    • They are working on getting the PVR version of banned. Best of luck to them.
    • 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.)

    • Re:Contraband! (Score:4, Informative)

      by neochubbz ( 937091 ) on Thursday December 22, 2005 @09:18PM (#14323824) Homepage


      Actually, the MPAA is trying to make the cards not capable of recording copyrighted material by "flagging" copyrighted shows. The dreaded "broadcast flag" would make the card not able to record any "flagged" material. Or something like that... You can read all about it at the EFF website.

      http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/ [eff.org]
      • I was more referring to the Digital Transition Content Security Act , which according to /. wants to ban pretty much all A/D conversion.
      • I didn't realise that the card recorded anything, I would figure that there's gotta be some way around this flagging problem. You figure that the stream still makes it through the card to the computer and still shows up on the screen, why not just build a program which records the stream as if it's playing it rather than going directly from the video card's output?

        All in all, I've been pretty impressed by my AiW 9700 so far, i've had it for almost 2 years and haven't had many problems with it overall, actu
    • 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.
  • 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?
    • If you were planning to run it on a Windows box I would say the Nvidia version isn't nearly as good. On a Linux box it appears you have no choice.
    • Does nVidia offer an All In Wonder?
    • The closest thing I've seen with nVidia is those ASUS cards with tuner functionality slapped on, but ASUS's driver quality is no where near as good as nVidia's driver quality, so you are likely much better off getting a plain nVidia card which can be indepentantly upgraded, and pairing it with a generic PCI TV tuner card.
      • I'd recommend a USB-2 tuner instead of PCI for the following reasons:
        - If an AB is included, it's easier to use (since PCI cards will need to have a seperate IR receiver)
        - Coax connectors do hardly (if at all fit) into normal PCI slots
        - Easier when installing and upgrading
        - Notebook computer compatible
        - Easier to install
        And you can get quite good quality for a not much higher price than PCI tuner cards.

        • That is a good point that is only recently an option with USB 2 (Hi-Speed 480Mbps) since "Full Speed" 12Mbps could never carry a full resolution, full framerate TV stream. It would be very important to verify that you truely have Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports available before buying such a device, but with a new system build, it would be very likely that you would now.
        • - Coax connectors do hardly (if at all fit) into normal PCI slots

          10BaseT ethernet cards used those without problem, in PCI slots. But USB is still much easier, of course.

        • I'd recommend a USB-2 tuner instead of PCI

          Finding one that works right can be a bit of a challenge. Most of the USB video-capture devices I've run across deinterlace everything they capture, which makes it impossible to do inverse 3:2 pulldown before burning to DVD. Some of them are video-only, which leaves you capturing the audio with your soundcard. That can lead to nasty A/V sync problems unless you use something like Virtual VCR [sourceforge.net] to correct for the sync problems.

          So far, the only USB capture box

      • Leadtek do a VIVO nVidia card, if I remember rightly. Don't think it has a coaxial connector though, but it's a step in the right direction.

    • Re:so what's nvidia's equivalent of this thing? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Fareq ( 688769 ) on Thursday December 22, 2005 @09:44PM (#14323925)
      I owned an nVidia "Personal Cinema" version back when they were calling it that...

      It was essentially a GeForce 2MX with the TV Tuner / Video-In-Video-Out additions... At the time, it sucked horribly... couldn't record in *any* format without either chopping resolution to 352x240 OR dropping frames periodically... worse, though, the frame dropping would be in 5-10 frame spurts... get 250 consecutive frames, then lose the next 8...

      This wasn't entirely the card's fault... but I had such troubles with the drivers getting the thing to work at all that I still blame the driver as the likely biggest factor...

      It even supposedly had a hardware MPEG-1 encoder on the board... I never could get that to work...

      A friend owned the very first All-In-Wonder Radeon. He loved it.

      I've heard plenty of ATi users who have stories like my nVidia story, but I don't even know of anyone else who has an nVidia GPU + TV Tuner set... so take one pair of anecdotes for what they're worth...

      Now, until recently, ATi drivers were total shit. I mean hell, my Radeon 8500LE was so bad I had to return it (BSOD within 15 minutes of launching any DirectX-based game. Usually the crash was in ati.sys, sometimes the driver just broke the Windows memory manager, and then I'd get BSODs in things like ntfs.sys. Returned the card, bought a GeForce 4, and my problems went away... (well, actually that's when my overheating problems began, but that's an altogether different problem).

      However, I do really like my ATi X800XT. The driver no longer completely sucks. (I can still cause a BSOD from time to time -- but only if I have two or more DirectX games running simultaneously... since the BSOD is accompanied by really awful sounds from the speakers, I suspect that it involves a conflict of some sort between video and audio drivers, but I've dug nowhere near deeply enough to know if I'm right -- just a suspicion at this point...

  • STILL no cable box support! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mjphil ( 113320 ) * on Thursday December 22, 2005 @09:21PM (#14323837)
    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?
    • How about leaving off the "125 channel tuner" and adding a simple IR dongle?

      Because the `cable box` and `tuner` are one in the same!

      Go buy a dongle (or make one), they run about $50 - more than what it costs to make, ship and market a simple tuner. Really, you're asking for something for free. It's like saying: "Keep the baked potato, I want a second steak instead!"

      If you are just trying to record digital cable then wait for cards next year that will support cable card technology.

  • $380 is for "budget" users? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stan Vassilev ( 939229 ) on Thursday December 22, 2005 @09:24PM (#14323845)
    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.
    • It's an interesting question. A few years ago, I was buying $100 Matrox cards for OpenGL applications that we used to use SGI Solid Impact workstations for. A few years later, it was $100 Radeons, when I could get them with 64-128Mb of main memory. The only time we bought something more expensive was when we wanted to drive a stereo-wall, without syncing together two separate machines. (we'd done that, with a pair of Ultra-60s, and didn't want the headache of doing it with Windows).

      $100 is a good pric
    • I agree. For $380, one can buy a much-improved graphics card and two PCI HDTV tuners.

    • 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".

      Actually if you want to do anything with alpha channeling or high bandwidth video codecs you will NEED a modern, fast video card.

      As well your video card is only running these newer games (alot now are cutting support for that age hardware) because it doesn't support any video quality features newer than a gforce2 card, and so doesn't look anywhere near as g

    • Reading Comprehension (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @01:43AM (#14324916)
      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.
  • does it run linux?!

  • Voodoo 5500 AGP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Thursday December 22, 2005 @09:47PM (#14323932) Journal
    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
  • getting ready for Vista...

  • linux support (Score:4, Insightful)

    by asv108 ( 141455 ) <asv@nOspam.ivoss.com> on Thursday December 22, 2005 @10:00PM (#14323991) Homepage Journal
    I really wish some hardware sites would start doing a section on every hardware review about the status of linux support. It might encourage hardware manufactures to consider making at least a semi-decent attempt to support Linux.

    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.

  • 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.
    • This actually called something along the lines of AIW 2006 PCIe, vs. your AIW 2006. Minor, and silly difference, but they distinguishible by the price. AIW2006 ~$140, AIW2006PCIe $200.

      I have the same card, basically: AIW9600XT, and I love it.

      -bZj
  • A few things:

    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 e

    • ATI's card number IS easily understandable.

      Each new generation changes the beginning of the card number, e.g. 9... X... X1...
      Then each card series is defined as either a .300 .600 or .800. Then you can define revisions within the cards, like XT, XL etc.
      you must be blind not to see that a X1300 is a low end card, that is 2 generations ahead of a 9600
      • Thanks for the explaination, I guess. I didn't know mixing Roman and Arabic numberals was the cool thing now. And what's this XT/XL, etc stuff?

        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?

      • You're right, that makes perfect sense.

        IF you are a freakish loser.
      • It used to be that the first number was the DirectX version that the hardware supported. ATI 7xxx = DirectX7, ATI8xxx = DirectX8. Then they screwed that up by releasing the ATI 8500 series chipset as the new budget lineup in the 9xxx series (hence, the 9000, 9100, etc. are only DirectX8). Now, I don't know what the heck they are doing.
    • ATi also has a unified driver for oh... years now!

      I don't see how nVidia's change from GeForce2, GeForce3, GeForce440, GeForce 5500, GF6600, GF7800 makes any more sense than ATi's switch from Radeon 7500, 8500, 9500, X800, X1800, etc.

      -bZj
  • 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)

    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
  • 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.
    • 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
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 effort
  • 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.

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