"All-in-Wonder" Pretty Much Sums It Up
Written: Dec 27 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Has everything, including the kitchen sink. Fast 3D and High-Quality 2D.
Cons: No showstoppers, but better driver support could propel this card even further.
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| w9design's Full Review: ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON, (32 MB) PCI Video Card |
I don’t consider myself a gamer at all – most of the time I’m doing web design and programming. I had previously been using a Matrox G400, which is undisputedly the king of 2D, outperforming even workstation-level cards in terms of speed and clarity. This was all well and good, on the rare occasions I loaded up a game, the card floundered. I mean, we’re not just talking slow. I’m talking 10-15 frames per second (fps) in 800x600 resolution. To its defense, those few frames it rendered had some of the best image quality ever seen, second only to ATI’s Radeon.
When I was shopping for a new graphics card, I wanted something that was a capable 3D performer – it didn’t need to be head of the pack – and, more importantly, it had to have high-quality 2D. I invariably narrowed my search to ATI’s Radeon series. I began looking at the series, and the All-in-Wonder really struck my eye. It had a built-in TV tuner, complete with time-shifting (“TV-on-Demand”) a la TiVo, industry-leading DVD acceleration, and a full suite of video input and output ports. To top it off, it had a DVI-I port for digital flat panels and it supported Windows 2000. Sweetening the deal was the $215 price tag after a $30 coupon to Buy.com.
I went ahead and took the plunge. I became worried, because newsgroups and forums were filled with horror stories about driver flaws and incompatibilities. I was told that if I had a VIA chipset running Windows 2000, it would not work. Naturally, I became quite worried, considering I refuse to return to the instability that is Windows 98, and I have an AMD Athlon system with a VIA KT133 chipset motherboard.
When the board arrived and it was installed, I was pleasantly surprised. I installed drivers right off the CD and rebooted. Every single feature worked flawlessly. Once and a while there’s a quirk with the file player. The time-shifting feature and the Digital VCR are some of those things you never think you’ll need until you have them. And they really do come in handy. And yes, they eat disk space faster than your MP3 collection.
All in all, the board isn’t perfect. ATI still hasn’t fully emerged from the empty void known as driver support. But against all odds it works fine for me, and I don’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone. The 2D seems to be on par with the Matrox G400, and the 3D performance approaches that of the GeForce series. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
w9design
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Member: Nate LaFerle
Location: Royal Oak, MI
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 7 members
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