What a wonder this is! - Not a TV card Review
Written: Dec 17 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Easy installation
Cons: More than the average user will ever need
The Bottom Line: A very good high end card, if you're a gamer though, there are faster cards out there
|
|
|
| burningisis's Full Review: ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON, (32 MB) PCI Video Card |
I recently purchased a digital camcorder and wanted to stream videos of me and my cats across the internet. So the helpful person at the store pointed me directly to the All in Wonder. I had heard about the expense of video capture cards and I was ready to pay a hefty sum for this little darlin. Well with a surprised look on his face, the store rep came back saying "This is only $199, I thought it was more like $349" $349 for a video card???? I soon realized this was more than a video capture card, it was a video card and capture card. Something this newbie to upgrading my system never knew there was something that did both. I was looking for an IEEE input for my computer but this is so much better! The direct connection through the S-video is so much faster (for those of us when a split second is too slow).
So one week later I bring this darling home. Again, I have never installed a video card in my computer, I was probably running on the old 8Mb card that came with this archaic box of mine. Just pop it in the slot and you're ready to run.
I had no intention of viewing TV off of this card, no intention of speeding up my DVD capability, just streaming video. I'm not a hardcore gamer either... just The Sims on occasion.
The only problem I came across, is this card is not RGB compatable and a patch is required in order to stream.
I use an Athlon chip and I dont have a problem yet with this card with any slowing down, freezing of my computer or anything, though when I first started this program, the computer was complaining about low resources very frequently. A mild problem in the long run after I diabled all of this program's many features I'd never use.
After connecting the camcorder to this beauty and getting the RGB patch, I noticed a huge improvement on the quality of my video (not that the digital camcorder vs my old webcam had anything to do with this....) and many graphics intense programs I had were running a whole lot faster.
I wouldnt recommend this card to someone as new to computer upgrades as myself. This is probably WAY too much card for me. However, I really like it, and I wouldnt need something like the 64Mb Raedon, this is definitely a wonder for me.... I wonder if I'll ever make it through all the features now!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 169.99
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
burningisis
|
|
Reviews written: 30
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.