Good for Everything, Not Great for Anything
Written: Feb 10 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ease of use, good i/o a/v support, tv on my computer.
Cons: 3d support obviously not 3dfx-level, kinda pricey for what it does.
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| SwedishChef's Full Review: ATI All-in-Wonder® 128, (32 MB) PCI Video Car... |
I bought the All-in-Wonder Pro to turn an old Pentium 200/64 system into something that wouldn't annoy me just to look at. AND I wanted to have a television/DVD player next to my bed. These things have been accomplished.
The All-in-One does everything it proclaims and NONE of it as well as a dedicated PCI card (or, dare I say, a motherboard-wired dedicated chip) would do. The graphics acceleration is fine and dandy but clearly nothing like the acceleration I get off of the Voodoo II I bought for half as much for my other computer. The television works excellently, and for somebody who has any interest in video capture and editing, the various a/v input/output mechanisms are beautiful (including a nice svhs i/o).
The All-in-One also includes hardware DVD decoding which works fine, except that on a system as slow as mine the DVD play still skips some. To the best of my knowledge just a bit of memory upgrade ought to fix that right now.
This card was a good purchase for my specific needs, because I had an older computer that I just wanted to make passable and that I wanted to turn into an entertainment center so that I could get as little work done as possible. To that end, it functions nicely. I will caution that, if anything on the All-in-one is redundant with components already on your system, there are surely more economical ways to expand your computer and cards that, because they are more specialized, may offer you better performance. However, for general purpose use and non-specialized multimedia, the All-in-One lives up to its name and promises. And, if you're counting, it only takes up one PCI slot, which is a HUGE plus.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
SwedishChef
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Member: Matthew Gaventa
Location: Washington, DC
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 20 members
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