Great Features - Lots of Incompatibility
Written: May 20 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great features for non-gamers
Cons: 3D Features are terrible, card is moderately difficult to install.
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| rowena's Full Review: ATI All-in-Wonder® 128, (32 MB) PCI Video Car... |
I received an ATI All-In-Wonder Pro PCI from a friend and it had some nice features but I had some incompatibility issues with it from time to time. When the All-in-Wonder 128 came out, I thought "wow! new card, it is AGP and had better features. I want one!!", so it was on my birthday wish list.
The first problem that I had was with the drivers. The drivers that came with it had a great deal of issues, which were partially corrected in a new version and I was somewhat pleased. The 128 had a similar issue that the Pro PCI version did - jagged fonts in applications, and it does not seem to like JAVA too much either. I had 2 Monster-II cards (running SLi) in with the Pro PCI because the Rage chipset was really bad for 3D games. And it was a neat idea that I could pull out the Monster-II's and free up the PCI slots because I had heard that the Rage 128 chip was really good. I was not impressed by the Rage 128 chip. The 3D features didn't work with a bunch of games that I liked to play -- one of which, Darkstone; wouldn't run to save my life. And I contacted tech support numerous times. They told me to reinstall the driver, which wrecked the video capture features. I even checked out the usenet groups to see how many people were experiencing the same problem. Found something amongst all the people who experienced problems that were consistent: Darkstone, All-In-Wonder-128 and a Creative Labs SB Live or PCI 128 sound card.
Spent a week reconfiguring the video capture part before determining that ATI buried way too many lines in the system.dat file, so it didn't matter if you blew out the old drivers, you'd have to go into the system.dat file and remove anything related to the ATI card. I ended up putting my Monster-II's back in the machine and let those cards handle the 3D features.
Never bothered to use the TV tuner or the DVD features. It has really good quality capture abilities, both single-frame and video clips.
If you are not a gamer, I would recommend this card simply because it is a good 2D card (not great, but it is sufficient), and it has a lot of great features built in. I will admit that this card is better than most other all-in-one cards.
Computer novices and intermediates may find that this card can be a chore to install and configure and it would be strongly urged to let a more experienced person do it (someone who has installed and configured this card in another machine). It does have incompatibility issues with some hardware (Creative SB Live and SB 128 for example).
The card also heats up quite a bit (most 3D and Tuner cards do), so it is also recommended that you examine your case to make sure you have good ventilation and a decent fan system to help with airflow -- do not overcrowd this card.
The blue screens of death will also be a bit frustrating as well as software incompatibility issues when trying to use capture software. ATI isn't quite with it when it comes to providing fixes for issues within new drivers.
You get a bit more for what you pay for, the video capture features are really good for a card that is in the mid-range price.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
rowena
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Member: S. Ward
Location: Seattle, WA
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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