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Graphics Software Hardware

All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro Review 154

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wonder-if-it's-worth-it dept.
VL writes "From synthetic, to real-world game benchmarks. TV capture, DVD playback, and 2D/3D image quality... we covered all the bases with a review of All in Wonder 9600 Pro."
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All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro Review More

All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro Review

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  • Odd (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Soporific ( 595477 )
    Aren't there a million sites out there that do hardware reviews? Or is it a slow newsday?

    ~S

  • AIW (Score:2, Informative)

    by pheared ( 446683 )
    AIW has been a nice low cost video swiss army knife. If I weren't so happy with my ATI Radeon 9000 (and ATI's support of it with drivers!) I would get one of these.

    • Re:AIW (Score:2, Informative)

      by tronicum ( 617382 )
      I have an AIW 8500DV and the Windows Driver suck to hell. MMC (Multimedia Center) breaks 2 times everyday, updating is a pain because it involves quite a lot of stuff (DirectX, Video Driver, Overlay Driver, MMC itself). I update once every 3-4 month and it takes a long time to get it running.

      I used it with Linux a bit, but Multimedia drivers and applications are better with Windows (recording MPEG2 in Software from an device etc.)

      I dont know if I would buy such a AIW again, I had an PCI AIW, now the AGP

      • Re:AIW (Score:3, Informative)

        by slaker ( 53818 )
        You have to do things in the proper order. The order goes like this:

        Catalyst, ATI WDM driver, ATI DAO supplemental files, ATI DVD decoder (if you don't have it), MMC.

        If you follow that order, nothing breaks. That's the order on ATI's site. Guess what? It works.

        I believe I've had noe of every model of ATI AIW. They do work very well. I'm not a gamer though, so I guess your milegage may vary.

    • Re:AIW (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Espectr0 ( 577637 )
      If I weren't so happy with my ATI Radeon 9000 (and ATI's support of it with drivers!) I would get one of these.

      Huh? You may be the only one in luck to get good drivers for them. Fact is, everybody knows ati has the worst drivers in the industry. Just last week i wanted to upgrade my older AIW to the latest driver and multimedia application, and the installation of neither worked (told it couldn't detect the hardware, and i uninstalled the other version and launched vga mode like the docs said, so i had to

      • Re:AIW (Score:4, Funny)

        by cK-Gunslinger ( 443452 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @12:17PM (#7559401) Journal
        Fact is, everybody knows ati has the worst drivers in the industry.

        Hi. 1999 called. They want thier information back.

        • Re:AIW (Score:2, Informative)

          by JAgostoni ( 685117 )
          And I just blew all my Mod points ... even though I am an nVidia fan, I am going to have to agree with this one. ATI has started getting their act together while I feel that nVidia has not done a whole lot new with their drivers.

          • Re:AIW (Score:2, Informative)

            by DarkVader ( 121278 )
            And I'm going to have to disagree.

            They STILL don't have a driver that handles video in for Mac OS X.

            I'm getting very tired of having to boot into 9 to watch TV.

      • Re:AIW (Score:2, Interesting)

        by pheared ( 446683 )
        Oh, I guess you are on Windows. I have not used Windows on my computers in several years so I can't comment on ATI's drivers for that Operating System, but it does sound like they are troublesome.

        The Linux drivers work just as advertised once you get them setup.
      • I think this troll is stuck in a time warp...

        As a regular on rage3d.com, the only time I have heard of this is if you are trying to install drivers for the wrong card. If you have an original Radeon AIW, or the AIW 7500, you have to pay extra to get MMC 8.0+. If you try to download and install the version available on ATI's website, it won't work. You can still install MMC 7.x however.

        This really is fair, the latest MMC has a lot of new features and ATI has spent a great deal of time making their softw
        • If you have an original Radeon AIW, or the AIW 7500, you have to pay extra to get MMC 8.0+. If you try to download and install the version available on ATI's website, it won't work. You can still install MMC 7.x however.

          Well i read the documentation, and it clearly says that the AIW 7500 is supported, so i went out and got it!
    • One thing to note is that they mantion that FM tuning is a NEW FEATURE. I'm sorry, new? what's so new about it? Hell it's not even New to ATI, their old ATI-TV cards had FM radio and I think many of their old AIW cards had it too. They're just re-vamping an old feature that they removed years Ago.

  • Linux support (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheAcousticMotrbiker ( 313701 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:22AM (#7558193)
    How is linux support for this beast ?
    Will it do decent GL ?

    • Re:Linux support (Score:5, Informative)

      by mark_lybarger ( 199098 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:28AM (#7558235)
      http://gatos.sourceforge.net/supported_cards.php

      at video capture/tv tuner cards are supported by gatos. the 9700 is listed as "support on the way thanks to ATI", but nothing on the 9600. you might want to check the mail list archives or post to the list to see. i have aiw 128 pro and it works nicely w/ linux, though i haven't tried capture in a year or so. it was rough at the time i last tried it. i just want to easily record vcd compliant mpeg video from the input card. (via cron if possible). maybe that functionality exists now.
      • The km module is a bit rough yet. I don't have it compiled because it needs module versioning turned off in the kernel for some reason. You can't use AVview with cron, however, once the AVview app is launched you can use another program (like ffmpeg to do the recording.

    • Re:Linux support (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Yarn ( 75 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @11:04AM (#7558594) Homepage
      I had a user who wanted gentoo on their PC the other day. It had a 9600 based OEM card.

      You have to use the ATI binary drivers, and they're a little flakey from the gentoo package; if you ran the X server multiple times in succession the machine would lock up so only the magic sysrq could save you. However, the drivers downloaded directly from ATI's site seemed to work fine, despite being identical size.

      It could have just been fluke, I didn't have the time to debug the problem properly. I also didn't have time to do any benchmarking.
    • Well, from a developer point of view it's pretty nice. GL_EXTENSIONS returned so much crap that my 1024 byte character buffer was too small. So one quick edit later - this is what it supports:

      GL_ARB_multitexture GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_S3_s3tc GL_ARB_depth_texture GL_ARB_fragment_program GL_ARB_multisample GL_ARB_point_parameters GL_ARB_shadow GL_ARB_shadow_ambient GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_tex

  • Linux drivers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eddy ( 18759 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:24AM (#7558207) Homepage Journal

    Do they test the linux drivers, or is this another one of those "there exists only one platform, and it's name is 3DMark"-reviews?

    • Re:Linux drivers? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      AKA as "The only real skill we have is installing hardware and clicking on the 3DMark 2003 icon"-reviewers.

      The world is full of them. The only decent sites seems to be The Tech Report [tech-report.com] and Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] who actually try to test the gear on something other than WindowsXP.

    • Re:Linux drivers? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by The One KEA ( 707661 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:35AM (#7558306) Journal
      You make a valid point -- so far no review of modern video cards that I have ever been able to find has benchmarked the card on a Linux platform. Unfortunately, there are multiple valid reasons why they don't, the main ones being that the Linux drivers are still a little too involved to set up easily; the lack of game-independent benchmarks for Linux that work in a GUI; and finally, probably their belief that no one games on Linux anyway.

      Except for the id fans; thanks to teh Carmack, every single game they've written since Doom has been ported to Linux either during development or after the source code was GPLed. If ATi and NVIDIA (or even XGI) would clean up their drivers and work with either UnitedLinux, the LSB or the distro makers like SuSE and Mandrake to improve the installability of the driver for Linux n00bs, the benchmark companies might begin releasing game-independent benchmark ports like 3DMark and Aquamark, and companies would be encouraged to port to Linux or make their source code available to folks who will (like icculus [icculus.org]).

      • More than games. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by eddy ( 18759 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:42AM (#7558377) Homepage Journal

        Well, if the "drivers are a little too involved to set up" then that's certainly something the review should mention!

        This isn't all about games either, this isn't a hardcore gaming card, this is a "wide" product meant to be an overall decent graphics card for desktop and games. You have the PVR features for instance. Are those supported on any other OSen than Windows? If yes, out of the box or does it require third party drivers and/or software, will the remote function with these? If it's not supported, why? How does that compare to the competition, etc, etc.

        A review that doesn't even touch on these issues are all but useless. Zero information, seeing how there's a million of these reviews already.

        • Re:More than games. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by The One KEA ( 707661 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:56AM (#7558493) Journal
          Indeed. Unfortunately, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: the game companies won't release Linux games because there isn't enough marketshare, but since there's no Linux games no one tries to game under Linux, so the game companies won't release Linux games....

          Honestly, I don't know how well-supported the AIW cards are by the ATi Linux drivers -- and such support won't appear until enough people get together and make ATi aware of the fact that people want this functionality.

          Hopefully, sooner or later someone will actually write a review on how easily the latest & greatest video hardware can be installed on the major distros and how fast they are -- this is a biggie because the toolchain and options used to compile the X server, the kernel, the drivers and the libraries make a BIG difference. Fortunately, games like UT2K3 do run under Linux AND they have integrated benchmarking capabilities. So the review wouldn't be totally bereft of benchmarks.

          • You're still focusing on games. I think most people who go for the "All-in-Wonder" are more concerned with the extra features; like the PVR and the remote.

            • I focused on games because right now games are the major push to get decent Linux driver support for these AIW cards. If enough people began clamoring for PVR, the double requesting might bring about some increased driver support.

              Like I said before, it's a chicken-and-egg problem.
      • You make a valid point -- so far no review of modern video cards that I have ever been able to find has benchmarked the card on a Linux platform. Unfortunately, there are multiple valid reasons why they don't, the main ones being that the Linux drivers are still a little too involved to set up easily; the lack of game-independent benchmarks for Linux that work in a GUI; and finally, probably their belief that no one games on Linux anyway.

        My experience of buying cutting edge hardware is that the drivers a

  • And just in time for Xmas too... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:26AM (#7558221) Journal
    Strange, this "timing" lark. I wonder if they struggle to meet the deadline or just let thngs hang around until the public start buying in earnest for Xmas...

    Since it supports 2 monitors (prime requirement for me) I might even buy one... be nice to actually enable 3D to more than "minimal" for a change :-)

    Simon.

  • I have one question... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by clifgriffin ( 676199 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:26AM (#7558224) Homepage
    Are the Windows XP drivers up to snuff with this release? Previous All in Wonder drivers have sucked and have been unreliable for programattic access. I had to switch last year to another capture card manufacturer. Clif Blogzine.net [blogzine.net] Fortress of Insanity [homeunix.org]
    • Well,

      I have about six boxes at home. With a range of Video Cards. Geforce to ATI.

      All in Wonder 8500, and All in Wonder 9800 Pro.

      Both work fine under XP. The 8500 pro is running on a media box and I have not had anything go wrong with it. Mind you all this box does is video and audio, so it does not have the plethora of other conflicting packages running around.

      The 9800 pro AIW is on an XP surfing gaming box and no problems with it as well.

      The Geforce 4200 is on a linux box and no problems.

      I have

  • Down already... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tet ( 2721 ) * <slashdot@nOsPam.astradyne.co.uk> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:26AM (#7558225) Homepage Journal
    So you thought you'd submit a story to Slashdot to get some visitors to your site. Well done. Yes, it's a cheap way to get some publicity for a vaguely tech related site. But didn't it occur to you to ensure it could survive the slashdotting before you submitted the story?

    • Re:Down already... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Grant29 ( 701796 )
      Yeah, I think your right. Anyways, why not go to Rage 3D [rage3d.com]? They are an ATI dedicated site. They have very active forums there for user-to-user support.

      • Re:Down already... (Score:4, Informative)

        by minus9 ( 106327 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @11:00AM (#7558528) Homepage
        They also have a very good Linux forum for thrashing out ATI issues. Without them I would have never known about the schneider-digital drivers for my graphics card and would have been stuck with with an older version of XFree86 or no 3D acceleration. Thankfully the official ATI drivers seem to have gone "legit" now.

    • I haven't read the article (but hey, who does?), but after reading your post I felt like I should give it another hit. Unfortunately it loaded. . . so I refreshed it.

  • What's so special about this review?

  • No DVI... (Off-topic) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MattRog ( 527508 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:31AM (#7558269)
    For those of us with DVI LCDs is there a good 3D card which supports dual DVIs? I have two Iiyama DVI 19" LCDs and my current card (GeForce4 Ti 4600) only supports one DVI and one VGA (so one display is perfect and the other noticeably less so). This (yuck!) only supports dual VGA!!!

    I've been looking but I can't find a flavor of Radeon or GeForce that supports dual DVI. With the latest fantastico-new games (like Deus Ex2, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, etc.) being released in the near-term I'd really like to upgrade (replace) my older PC - I'd like to get dual DVI out and superb gaming performance/graphics (so it would have to be on par with the 9600's etc.).

    Any ideas/help?
    • From Matrox's website Matrox Millennium G550 Dual-DVI [matrox.com] Matrox has always been a great competitor in the 2D desktop... dual-head technology is strictly Windows based for this card though.
    • Google is your friend. ASUS has plans to release a video card based on the R360, the chip used on the Radeon 9800XT. Link [hardwareanalysis.com].

      You can also get a product listing straight from ASUS, here [asus.com]. This page lists Dual DVI as an option for the R360-based card, but if you look around you should be able to find info for other cards.
    • You probably wont see that as a common feature for quite some time. It *may* eventually happen once CRTs start using DVI

      http://www.siimage.com/documents/SiI-WP-001-A.p d f

      but it will probably take about two years to gain any serious market penetration. Even superior technology needs time to gain acceptance; look at the fact that SATA drives still arent prevalent as a good example, in spite of being clearly superior. In fact, it wouldnt be hard at all to make a drive that is both ATA and SATA, just like

      • You probably wont see that as a common feature for quite some time. It *may* eventually happen once CRTs start using DVI.

        I doubt that will drive it. LCDs are becoming more and more common while CRTs are becoming more and more scarce. Most LCDs can handle 3D games quite nicely, despite what the zealots still clutching their 800-lb behemoth might tell you. Also, every Joe Nongamer is buying an LCD with their new computer these days, so I doubt much new innovation will be made on CRTs since that is not wher

        • Not entirely true. Personally, my brother just purchased a computer system (I spec'd out the stuff and assembled it for him). On the issue of a monitor, however, I told him it was his decision. In the end, he decided on a nice 19" monitor that was around $200, rather than pay ~$500 on a 17" LCD.

          Basically, CRTs are still a good option; after all, its a mature technology. While his new monitor takes up considerably more desktop real estate than an LDC would, it is still not as deep as my old 17" monitor.

        • LCDs are nice but I'm not paying those prices yet.

          Some CRTs had DVI but it simply isn't worth it IMO because it still means needing ADC in the monitor too.

          I've seen many dual DVI cards, I really don't see what the problem is in finding them. If you want video capture, I'd suggest the LifeView FlyVideo 2000.

          Unless there is a space or lack of slots reason to have video capture and computer display on one card, keeping them separate allows more affordable upgrade paths.
    • how much are you willing to spend?

      we bought an nvidia fx 5900 ultra (i think. whatever was 'high end' a month ago) about a month ago to run this [nasa.gov] software for mer ... the card was expensive as hell, but it's so damn sweet. the card was an $800 option on the dell we purchased for it. the card drives 2 dell 1901 flat panels (which i highly recommend)
    • This (yuck!) only supports dual VGA!!!

      Perfect. I might even consider getting one then. I've been looking for a dual head ATI card for a while that supports 2 x VGA. I don't have a DVI screen, and don't wish to put up with the inferior quality that a flat screen gives. So far, I'm driving my CRTs with a Matrox G450, but I'd like something a bit faster. To date, most Radeons have only been 1 VGA and 1 DVI...

      • Actually all radeons that support two displays support dual vga. If you get a retail version it includes a DVI-->VGA dongle. This dongle isn't present in most OEM versions but can be ordered directly from ATI.

        Cheers,
        _GP_
      • There is a such thing as a DVI->VGA converter... hell, I have 2 of them that came with my dual-dvi video card (It's a GeForce4 MX440 though), and you can order them from newegg if you wanted.
      • How is ATI's support for multiple monitors under Win2K?

        I'm mainly interested in using dual monitors for productivity (code in one monitor, interface in the other).

        Is an ATI card good enough at this to make a dual-monitor setup worth it, or should I get a single, larger monitor instead?
    • Here is a nice list:

      http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?s=&threadi d= 33992

      I'm just getting a dual-dvi ti4600 from gainward...
      • Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the products listed are mostly sub-Radeon9000 quality and/or non-existant (the Ti4600 they list doesn't look like it is sold any more?).

        Do you have the URL to the Ti4600?
        • The Quadro FX Line from PNY is quite existant, also the ATI FireGL cards. I got my Ti4600 (Geforce 4 PowerPack! Model Ultra/750-8X XP "Golden Sample") from the shop at gainward.de.
          • Are the FX/FireGL any good, though
            (e.g. I want something at least as good as the 9600, for I expect to keep this system for many years)? I'm not up on the latest nVidia vis-a-vis Radeon.
      • Just an FYI: I bought the Gainward and had huge problems. And because I was an idiot, I was unable to return it. Be wary.
    • Why do you need dual accelerated LCDs? Few-to-no games actually support multi-monitor 3D. Granted, you can force some 3D shooters like Q3 to span two monitors, but why would you? You're focus/crosshair would be split down the center. (I guess 3 monitors would be ideal, but you'd need a heck of a card to drive a 3D display at 3840x1024 or higher.)

      A better bet would be to get a nice 3D AGP card (ATI Radeon 9600/9700/9800) for gaming on one monitor, and a cheap PCI, DVI-out card for driving the second LCD
    • Check out Matrox's Parhelia series of cards. They are technically tri headed as the 2nd DVI connector forks off to two 15pin VGA connectors.

      Expensive though at 350 or so. Yes there is linux support.
    • Try ATI's FireGL line [ati.com].

      They're expensive, offer dual DVI and are based on the 9700 and 9800 (top of the line 3d performance).

  • Linux Drivers for PVR functionability (Score:5, Informative)

    by acherrington ( 465776 ) <acherrington@nOspAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:31AM (#7558275)
    I think the card is great and has a ton of functionability. But when the time came for me to buy a PVR card, I had to skip on this one in favor of the hauppauge wintv pvr 350 PCI card and a seperate video card solution.

    I had to do this dasterdly deed due to the current state of linux driver support (ie lacking). Is anyone developing drivers for this or is ATI creating a too fast of moving target. Does anyone have any alternative solutions?

  • Review of a review? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Fancia ( 710007 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:33AM (#7558288)
    review of All in Wonder 9600 Pro Review"
    A review of the All in Wonder 9600 Pro review? I know we want to keep tabs on fair reviews, but isn't this a bit much?
  • review of All in Wonder 9600 Pro Review

    Is it a review of a card, or a review of a review? If the site weren't slashdotted, I could tell...

  • ATI's AIW has always been... (Score:3, Informative)

    by MindSlap ( 640263 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:42AM (#7558364)
    My capture board of choice..
    I'm currently on my 3rd AIW ATI card. Good bang for the buck and darn good perfomance.

    I've used other boards like Osprey but ATI's gear always seems to do it better, and tends to have better bundled software and 3rd party support.

    Up until recently, The Mach chipset in older AIW's was 'ok' for gaming. But I wasnt much into gaming. I preferred em for capturing.

    But now.. They have a great cap card AND gaming card!

    I'd say ATI today, is what Voodoo was a few years ago..

  • "A Dremel is something these users will need to keep handy. Remember, the Dremel is for the SFF case, and not to lop off the FM-Tuner."

    I'm surprised he rated the card so well, considering case modifications are required to make it fit in the SFF case. Your average gamer/PC user will not want to go through the hassle of cutting part of the case to make it fit. They'll probably just return it if they can't make it fit immediately.
  • Damn it, where's my HDTV support?????

    • Re:HDTV support (Score:3, Informative)

      by crow ( 16139 )
      HDTV support will be limited in capture cards for some time, and I'll explain why:

      HDTV is sent in a MPEG-2 format, so if you can get the raw transport stream, you don't have to do any fancy encoding. So in theory, an HDTV capture card is less complicated than a traditional NTSC/PAL capture card. Unfortunately, there are several different standards for encoding the transport stream. For broadcast television, the standard is ATSC, and you can get several ATSC tuner cards, including one specifically for Li

      • All I really want is some kind of MPEG hardware
        playback of ATSC streams to component video - on
        Linux. Do you know of any progress in this area?
        I already have the pchdtv.com card, which works
        well enough, but non-accelerated playback onto a
        21" monitor isn't quite as useful as true component
        video.
        • I'm still researching this, as I haven't started purchasing the parts for my HTPC (home theater PC). My understanding, though, is that some of the GForce cards have support that helps with MPEG playback. If someone who knows more reads this, please post.
      • Here's what I'm looking for. I just bought a big monster HDTV for my rec room and I want to play TFC on my PC and use the HDTV for the monitor. Maybe even use it for everyday web browsing, too. It has a DVI input, but not the same one this card has. Does ATI or anyone else have a card that will do that?
        • I'm not sure about the 9600, but my All-in-Wonder 9700 came with an HDTV output adapter as well as one for regular TV (for the 9700, it's a squid-like thing that plugs into a port on the back of the card and branches into various video and audio outputs).

          Oh, here [ati.com] we go...

          Q6: What modes does the HDTV Component Video Adapter support?
          A6: ATI's HDTV Component Video Adapter supports the standard analog component modes of 480i (interlaced), 480p (progressive), 720p and 1080i.
          Q7: What modes can I w

  • Text of the multi-page article (sans graphics) (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:53AM (#7558473)
    ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro: Like the AIW 9800 Pro, this mainstream offering supports DX9 and has some great A/V capabilities. It also has a couple of unique features that separates itself from the rest of the AIW line.

    Date: November 21, 2003
    Manufacturer: ATI
    Written By: Hubert Wong
    Price: $205 USD

    The All-In-Wonder series have been a great success for ATI. Recently, they've been coupling some great TV-Tuning functionality with a modern VPU. This is a far cry from early All-In-Wonders (AIW) where the VPU was based on a handicapped version of their fastest card.

    Another smart decision was releasing different variants of the AIW cards, each targeting a different market segment. The AIW VE was aimed at the budget market, where potential users may not have an AGP slot available. This AIW lacked a remote, and used a two year old VPU, but it was priced very low, and the multimedia aspect matched the top-end AIW 9700 Pro (now discontinued in favour of the faster 9800 Pro VPU). The AIW 9000 was another mainstream part, but supported DirectX 8.1 gaming. This card suffered something of "middle child syndrome" and didn't seem to get as much fanfare as the other AIW parts. The AIW 9800 Pro is ATI's current top dog, matching their quality multimedia features with their most modern VPU (until the XT came out).

    Though the VPUs (and hence, the price) differed, what all three cards had in common was the TV-Tuner and the Theater 200 Video Processing Engine (VPE). Another thing they had in common, was the inability to output to dual CRT monitors. Considering that multimedia authors live and die with multi-displays, this was quite an omission in the AIW series. Today, we'll be looking at the AIW 9600 Pro, which has everything current AIWs have, and includes DirectX 9 support, Theater 200, FM-Radio (a new feature), and the previously MIA dual CRT display support.

    Specifications

    You can grab ATI's full specifications from their page, but I thought it would be good to outline a few important features.

    TV-ON-DEMAND: Exactly as it sounds. With the AIW 9600 Pro, you can record your favorite programs, and pause live TV (playing it back whenever you want) directly on to your hard drive. The Gemstar GUIDE Plus+ is a software and web based application that works much like a TiVO's TV guide.

    FM-ON-DEMAND: New to the AIW series is the AIW 9600 Pro's ability to listen to and record live radio. This works by attaching an antenna to the IO panel on the card. Unfortunently, this antenna isn't included, and you'll need to pick up your own.

    THRUVIEW: Like other AIW cards, you can view TV through a translucent overlay on your desktop. This will allow you to work on your primary window, while still being able to watch TV. In theory, this sounds great, but I found it too distracting to use in a practical environment.

    Remote Wonder: A fully wireless remote, that works by radio frequency, rather than infrared. That means the signal will pass through most walls found in homes, and at a range of about 30 feet. We reviewed it here, so check that review for our full thoughts.

    EAZYLOOK: Also known as the "10 foot interface". An issue with past ATI TV-Tuning based setups was the interface was too small to read on an actual television set. Add the typically low resolution of TVs, and you can see the problems. EAZYLOOK uses a much friendlier and simplified menu, and the font size is much larger, making it easier to use.

    MulTView: This is a feature that will enable dual TV tuner capabilities including Picture-in-Picture and independent channel surfing. Want to watch one channel, while recording another? You couldn't do it before, but now you can, so long as you have an additional ATI TV Wonder. Hopefully, this is something ATI can integrate into one card in the future.

    DirectX 9: The AIW 9600 Pro offers full DX9 support.

    The ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro

    Unlike earlier ATI products, the shipping boxes are squarer now, as opposed to

  • Notes... (Score:3, Informative)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @11:03AM (#7558570) Homepage
    I have the TV Wonder VE, which is essentially the TV tuner part of this card (well it turns out to be more complicated than that, but for argument's sake).

    The applications for watching and recording TV shows suck. Real bad. I have the latest version from their website too.

    The best program I encountered was Snapstream [snapstream.com], and it works with the card reviewed in this article. But it uses ACCESS and Jet to store tv shows, and can you guess what happened 3x before my trial period was over? That's right, corrupt database.

    One further note, these cards will NOT work with Myth TV [mythtv.org], the linux option. The TV Wonder series does work with Myth, though.

    • You're right. It *is* more complicated than that, especially since the latest version on the website for your card [ati.com] is significantly older than the latest version available for all-in-wonder cards [ati.com], and a reasonable person might expect that the new version has a bunch of new features and, quite possibly, bug fixes.
      • What's your point? The TV Wonder VE is not an obsolete product, its in their active supported (and sold) lineup. There might very well be a great reason why the latest software doesn't work with my card, but I don't care.

        The software is crappy, even if they fix the bugs. The interface sucks, the TV Tuner info overlay sucks. I told it to record a show for me, it put the show on my desktop. I try to open it with their player, it crashes. I try to play it in Quicktime (its a MOV file), Quicktime doesn't kn
  • I've had an AIW 9800 pro in my system for a while now. 9600 seems a few steps behind.

  • May I make a suggestion - Radeon 9800 non-pro. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shadowlight1 ( 77239 ) <chris@feyrer.gmail@com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @11:54AM (#7559159) Homepage
    I had an AllinWonder Pro way back in the day. Used it to sample in some digital video and back up some of my VHS tapes to HD. Drivers sucked. When I got Windows 2000, it totally broke. Since then, I've avoided the whole thing by getting a digital camera with USB drivers. Much more flexible anyways, and you can plug in external sources into the dv camera and I'm back where I was with the AllinWonder.

    So here's my video card suggestion: Forget the 9600 AiW and go straight to a 9800 non-pro version. According to Tom's hardware, 20-30% performance difference over the 9600 graphically. Finally, do NOT get the Pro, XT, or SE versions of the 9800 unless you are a hardcore gamer. I was able to get a Radeon 9800/128 meg version for $185 on EBay!

    The lower clock speed of the 9800 vs 9800 Pro affects performance minimally, but you can also overclock the regular 9800 to have Pro-like speeds, from what I hear.
    Tom's hardware also indicated VIRTUALLY NO PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCE between the 128 and 256 meg RAM versions of the RaDeon 9800 Pro card.
    ----
    Basically, the extra RAM, fluff features ATI puts on their cards is for the kiddies. If you want to buy in, go for it. Otherwise, be smart, take advantage of the core technology by getting the 9800 -- you'll get all the performance and save $200. Save your money for dedicated, portable peripherals.
    • Newegg has the AIW 9700 non-pro for only $40 more than the AIW 9600 pro. 9800 AIWs are still way up in the $300 range.

      Also, in a year, games will include support for 256 megs of textures. That was the same argument said about every increase in onboard memory. Who needs 64 megs of vram? or 128? Now, thats standard. If you are going to go for the fastest video card, you might as well get the maximum available memory so you can continue to use the card for years to come.

      • One argument in favor of the 9600AIW is the fact that it doesn't draw NEARLY as much power as its bigger brothers. I have 9600, 9700 and 9800 (all Pro models) AIW cards.

        The 9600 doesn't get nearly as hot, doesn't need a power connection from the PSU, and has a less noisy fan. Heck, mine is passively cooled, even.

        If you're only interested in capture features, the 9600 has the same Rage Theater 200 chip as the other high-dollar ATI cards, without all the gamer stuff that goes with it.
    • 9800se is cripled.

      though it's cheaper than other 9800's it goes on par with 9600 pro or so when it comes to actually doing something.

      however, there was/is an all in wonder 9800se for quite cheap with the ati remote controller(rc) to boot for quite cheap..

  • LInux Oriented Hardware Reviews (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jagasian ( 129329 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @12:15PM (#7559373)
    Why do hardware reviews only test the hardware out under Windows? Are there any hardware review sites that review hardware under Linux? Just because a piece of hardware performs nicely or efficiently under Windows doesn't mean the same applies under Linux.

    Things are Linux oriented hardware review should cover:
    1. Linux based synthetic benchmarks
    2. Benchmarks under popular Linux games
    3. OSS drivers (yes/no)
    4. Linux support (yes/no)
    • I am sure the reason is that the device is designed to work under windows - not linux.

      -but- if your suggestion was carried out, maybe that eventually wouldn't be the case.
    • 2. Benchmarks under popular Linux games it's not particularly insightful to know that tuxracer will run at 800 fps
      • There are plenty of graphically intensive games for Linux: the Quakes, the Unreals, Savage, etc... There are also many games that run under WineX. I bet most ATI users don't know that NVIDIA cards work better under WineX than ATI cards.

        I use Linux as my only desktop, and I would like to know what hardware I should buy. There are closed driver issues, support issues, and many other things that I need to evaluate before I buy.

        Heck, I would be willing to go with a slightly slower card if that meant I got
  • I am not a gamer and really couldn't care less about video cards. I am building a new computer for my brother for Christmas, though, and he will want to play games.

    Right up front we're making a comprimise on price, budgeting I have done my some research [tomshardware.com] (that site, among others, seemed the most helpful) and I'm leaning toward the Asus V9250 or an MSI FX5200. Do keep in mind that this will be a Windows machine, as the guy is decidedly non-computer technicalish.

    So sure, this is slightly off-topic - don't

  • I have a gf4 4200 vivo that i just love, gaming performance is great, dual monitiors (with a DVI/VGA convertor), nice drivers. But i will honestly not buy another one, nor reccomend it. The included softwaer BLOWS. ATI has their 1st party developed media center software that is wonderful. Nvidia gives you a hodge podge of 3rd party crap that didnt include half the registration numbers, so now im illegaly running software that i paid for! I wish that i could get the ATI software to be compatabe with it,
    • DScaler is a wonderful TV free (as in beer GPL)TV tuner. Deinterlacing, full screen, the new Alpha version 4.0 has all the bell and whistles.
      DScaler [sourceforge.net]

      A good Media player that I like is Core Media Player [corecoded.com]. But media players are getting to be a dime a dozen. Video Lan [videolan.org] Client isn't too bad.

      • Ive looked at descaler, but it is not compatable with the chipset in the AIW or VIVO cards. But it seems to do everything i need... almost.

        VLC is a godesend, it never leaves the flashdrive arround my neck (both mac and PC versions). Ill have to check out CMP though, it looks neat.

  • I got a Radeon 9500 (the variant built on a 9700 PBC) and re-enabled all the disabled features. Instant 9700pro+ after overclocking. Better than a 9600 and cheaper too.
    hacked drivers @ http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/download.php
    of course it doesnt do tv capture

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