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Tuesday, July 05, 2005 10:12 AM PT Posted by Alan Stafford
New Graphics Cards From ATI
ATI Technologies introduced yet another graphics card with a TV tuner today, the All-In-Wonder X800 XL PCI Express. It doesn't have quite as much graphics power as the All-In-Wonder X800 XT I reviewed several weeks ago, but the older card uses the AGP bus. The new card is the most powerful PCI Express card ATI makes with a built-in TV tuner. It costs $399, or $50 less than the AGP version.But ATI isn't migrating everything to PCI Express. Another card, the All-In-Wonder 2006 Edition (Yoo hoo, it's 2005) that it introduced a week or so ago uses AGP. That card has medium-range graphics power, plus the TV tuner, for $199--not bad, seeing as it also includes a remote control. And, if you send in a coupon included in the box, you can get a Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition-compatible remote control for half-price (so, about $49 after you apply the coupon).
Other ATI updates: It's now shipping an electronic programming guide for use with its HDTV Wonder, which brings in over-the-air HDTV programming (and analog TV via a cable connection, if you want). Only problem is, you can only get it on a CD, and you have to pay shipping and handling--about $15. The interesting thing about the programming guide is that it takes not only the location but also the terrain where you live into account--so if you live in the mountains, it'll probably you that you can't get squat.
Last item: I complained in my review of the company's TV Wonder Elite that that that card's channel-changing speed is unacceptably slow, and I compared its speed to that of a nine-year-old Macintosh. ATI's representative said that wasn't quite fair, because my old Mac doesn't time-shift TV, as the TV Wonder Elite does, and that any time-shifting device will suffer some sort of delay. I'll give him that--my TiVo's not as fast as my old Mac, but my TiVo leaves the TV Wonder Elite in the dust. The representative said ATI's working on improving the speed, by the way. So tell me, what's more important when you watch TV: channel-changing speed, or image quality?
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Hmmm... I fail to see the point to know why ATI chose AGP over PCI Express for All-in-Wonder 2006...
Anyway, those products are nothing new to me, except HDTV Wonder. It would be great if ATI releases the PCI Expores version of HDTV Wonder.
Anyway, I'm waiting for ATI to release a Pixel/Vertex shader 3.0 version of the PCI Express graphics cards. I'm not going for nVidia.
Why PCI Express? Because I'm going to be making my own computer and will be getting an nForce4 Ultra with the Socket 939 motherboard, plus, PCI Express. Fatal1ty An8 939 is what I plan to get.
Uhhh - PCI Express although cool is atleast a couple of years away. How? Well AGP 8x bandwidth hasn't been exhausted yet. (perf at 4x and 8x mode are almost the same). Also the less said about ATI's love for linux, the better. ATI chose AGP because people who buy PCI-E cards will want a killer graphics card to go with their new mobo. No one in their right mind will buy an AIW PCI-E especially one as mediocre in performance as the one above
"Why PCI Express? Because I'm going to be making my own computer and will be getting an nForce4 Ultra with the Socket 939 motherboard, plus, PCI Express. Fatal1ty An8 939 is what I plan to get." - Grayson Peddie
You are just sooooo cool aren't you?
Soooo, you will be buying an nvidia chipset and throw an ati card on it with the cruddy ati drivers why???
If you knew as much game as you talked, you would choose nvidia over ati, mr. peddie.
I won't bore you with copious details on why nvidia is better, just do your research.
Nope! No research for me! ;)
My mom got an Aptiva from IBM back in 1997 with an ATI chipset. I grow fond of ATI and I know ATI a lot more than nVidia. However, I've seen that there seem to be fewer ATI Radeon Xpress 200 motherboards, I've come to a conclusion that there seemed to be more nVidia nForce4 than ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipsets. ATI Radeon Xpress 200 may not be well-known, I'll just wait until ABit put in the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 in Fatal1ty motherboards.
Remember, I've grown fond of ATI.
I'm just waiting for ATI to come up with new generations of video cards. nVidia have released the gForce 7800 but I'm not going for that. For ATI, I do expect to see ATI produce dual-core GPU that could generate less heat but I'm aware that the GPU may run a little slower than single-core GPU, but generates less heat. Plus, ATI could bring in more transistors and focus on upping up the performance of the ATI GPU and not to up the clock speed too much.
So, from a hardcore gamer point of view, I fail to see a point of why ATI went with AGP for AIW 2006 instead of PCI-Express. Plus, I'm heading into the future of next-generation sound card (Creative X-Fi), GPU (AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+ or better), and Windows code-named Longhorn.
You know what I like about ATI ? You buy an older card (like the 9600) and a year later it's twice the speed as the same card the year before! How, you say? Well, the ATI drivers are constantly improving and the one constant is that the newest drivers for their newest cards are ALWAYS horribly inefficient when they first come out... So , why even bother getting the new chip! Just go and update your drivers on a 9000 series card for free to get the best bang for your buck :-)
and another thing! -- get separate TV tuner and graphics cards... after 2 All-in-Wonder ('99 and '01) upgrades i finally realized re-buying the TV tuner every 18-24 months was a waste. Of course, now i barely even use the tv tuner; all the good shows are on bittorrent sites. :)
Being a linux user I'd say ATI is way behind in driver quality. I'm not arguing in power or quality of video, I just like to actually use 3D with a 3D card under linux. A thing that is natural with nVidia and hard to achieve with Ati.
jeez i dont evan have a pci expres or an agp slot it suks i got my computer from dell and was expecting better (read the small print)
So for us still on AGP what are the best 256 mb cards out there in overall performance, whats your opinion?
HAI, I NEED HELP FROM U.
I NEED INFORMATION FORM GRAPHICS
& WHAT IS GRAPHICS& WHEN THE GRAPHICS IS INVENTED & WHAT IS THE USE OF GRAPHICS &ADVANTAGE& DISADVANTAGE OF GRAPHICS.
I need the information as quickly.
thany u.
1 What is the difference between graphics card with VIVO(video input and video output), Video capture card and video editing card.
2 After installing a firewire( or IEEE 1394) card in the PCI slot, can I capture film(video) from a camcoder or VHS onto my PC
3 How do I disable integrated (or on board) graphics card if I want to use another graphics card (Upgrade)
We are wellocme to it's configuration.
Wellcome to the real world.