ATI All-in-Wonder video cards (need help buying)

michael_w

Well I think it's time to upgrade my vid card from onboard graphics to something a little better . I've finally got fed up enough with getting 4 fps in games like World of Warcraft to make me buy a video card. I've been looking at ATI all in wonder video cards because I like the dvr features built into them. Recording and pausing tv as well as the fact that combining my home theater with my computer would clean up my room tons really sounds good to me. I've been reading a bit and talking to some people but can't come up with a good decision. I don't want to spend too much and I'm not a hardcore gamer or anything but I don't want a hunker.

What I have my eye on right now is the ATI AIW 9800 Pro. ~link~ I have found it for sale for $200 cdn (170 usd). Would that be a good buy? I'm not really experiance with anything like this. All I've really been able to get out of friends is that I should buy something like what they have. A vid card more on the lines of an ATI X850 xt pe, but there is no way I'm going to spend $500+ on a video card...

I'm not sure how long that sale at future shop is going to last so I'd like to decide soon. edit: it ends on the 20th and they have 32 left.

Thanks,
Michael

edit again: O one last thing I forgot... since it can act like a dvr do I need to suscribe to anything like you would with tivo to be able to pause live tv and see what is on and coming up?

Schris22

they have one that takes in HDTV...just to let you know

I use a 9800 and a tv wonder

so essentially the same thing.

The 9800 will be outdated in a year or so. It's getting aged now. It'll last you a good two but you'll be struggling by the end of that or so. Video cards go on sale all the time so try pricegrabber.com shopping.com newegg.com zipzoomfly.com and hopefully somethign might come from there

Good luck,

Chris

michael_w

HDTV isn't really a big issue for me right now since I don't even have a tv that is HDTV compatiable.

It does suck that the 9800 pro will be obsolete in the near future but unless I spend a lot more I'm stuck with something that will soon be old and yesterday's news.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll keep searching for something decent.

Schris22

most lCD monitors are HDTV compatiable....most...very high resolutions these ****...

I would go with a graphics card you want...and then a seperate ATI tuner. there are alot of options out there that I didn't even know of until after I bought mine. So look they are there.

Chris

POLKOHOLIC

i currently own the ATI AIW 9200. Im not a hardcore gamer but I do like my games playing smooth. I play Need for Speed Underground 2 and Half Life 2. No problems at all handling those games. I haven't really played around with the tuner portion of this card. Have only captured a few movies from VHS. The quality is pretty good considering this is an entry level card. And I don't believe, you need a subscription for pausing and capturing live tv. You might need a subscription for TV Program Listings.

billbillw

I have an AIW X800XT. I have to say, I'm less than impressed by the capabilities of the built in TV tuner. It works, but its not the cleanest video, that's for sure. The FM tuner is a joke. I have not tried to use the video inputs. The gaming performance is right on par with the non-AIW cards.

michael_w

Well I found out that no you don't need to pay for any of the services the aiw supports. So basically it's like a TiVo without any monthly listing fees. That's the part that has me wanting an AIW card instead of a normal video card.

I've read that the X800XT has basically the same tuner quality as the 9800 pro. Does it just produce a noisy picture at times? I think I'll either be using my Samsung 15" lcd monitor or my Panasonic 20" TV until I can get something a little bigger.

I'll check out some more seperate tuners but from what I've been seeing it might be hard to get all the features that the 9800 has and still keep the price similar. Keep in mind I'd really like to buy from canadian stores / online places because occasionally when things get shipped accross the border I get a massive bill in the mail for border fees, which usually nearly doubles the price of the item.

Thanks for the help!

ledhed

I have the AIW 9600 XT Not bad on the video card portion but it sure sucks on the tuner side. I WILL NOT import any video using it. I used to use it for TV but, ATI isn't very good with their drivers or ease of use and it eventually wouldn't even open the tv program. Also, the software that it uses absolutely sucks. If I was going to buy a new graphics card, it would be Nvidia all the way

jcaut

This may not apply to what you're wanting to do, but I got an AIW 9600 mainly to capture video from home movie tapes for transfer to DVD. The video capture is not very good. It works, yes, but not very well. I think it's one of those instances where they took a product that could have been good and basically broke it in the name of copy protection. But that's just my theory. At any rate, there are better video capture devices as well as TV tuners. ATI's drivers can also be rather quirky and difficult to get working correctly. I ended up upgrading to newer drivers a few times, trying to fix my capture problem and by the second or third time, I had my computer so screwed up that I had to reformat and reinstall Windows. (If you get into a similar situation, there's a utility called Driver Cleaner that can help.)

I don't play games much, but as far as the graphics performance, I don't have any complaints.

phoneisbusy

Hi Michael,

If you can swing it, consider purchasing separate graphic and video capture cards. That way you can upgrade one without having to upgrade the other. I can't comment much on graphic cards as I don't play that many games. The most popular cards for pvr use are the hauppauge 150/250 with hardware compression. I have the 150 and the software works well enough more my purposes.

If you want tivo like capabilities there are many freeware products and some commerical ones and they have solid 150/250 support. AIW support can be iffy at times. Especially if you look at linux solutions.

The wintv150/250 are also popular red hot deal posting on the red flag deals website too.

regards

Dave

michael_w

Hmm so much to think about It's tough to decide when there are so many cards on the market. Looks like I could get the Hauppauge 150 for about $100 locally.

Right now I'm checking out Nvidia's 6600 gt which is supposed to be slightly better than the 9800 pro... At the moment I'm still trying to decide how much to spend so that I don't have to upgrade too soon.

You guys have brought me away from AIW's. Just like audio, seperates usually bring better quality and more options down the road...

Demiurge

Not sure how much you're into computers, but games like WoW rely on Memory and CPU speed moreso than they do on your actual video card. I mean, yes it matters and makes all the difference in the world, but if you have a lot of crappy ram and a slow CPU, the best video card on earth won't make a difference on your gaming experience.

You're looking for performance for gaming, at least that's what I gather.

So my suggestion in order of importance:

RAM 1-2 Gigs (Yes, there are many types)
CPU Speed
Decent Video Card

I'm a fan of ATI for my gaming needs, but there is nothing wrong with nVidia (it's just a speed game). Both are top notch quality. Also, there is NOTHING wrong with AIW unless you're a super nerd who is paying way too much attention to your systems insignificant details.

michael_w

That's a good point. I bought my computer with a small budget in mind so I didn't go very crazy. At this point I need a video card more than anything for gaming since the graphics built into my Asus motherboard are not quite top notch

My next step is to get some more ram. Right now I only have 512 and in places like Orgrimmar I lag fairly badly. You should have seen my comp go crazy when we did a double 40 man raid on Ironforge a couple days ago

Maybe I should just stick with something more along the lines of the 9800 pro and put that saved money from the graphics card towards upgrading other parts in my computer.

My guess is that if I got the 6600 GT or something better it would be restricted by my computer and not be able to perform much better than the ati 9800.

michael_w

What's with different brands offering the same video card but under their name? Like instead of it being an ATI 9600Pro it would be an MSI RX9600Pro-TD128. They both have the same specs and chipset but different brand name and usually at a lower price.

Demiurge

michael_w wrote:

That's a good point. I bought my computer with a small budget in mind so I didn't go very crazy. At this point I need a video card more than anything for gaming since the graphics built into my Asus motherboard are not quite top notch

My next step is to get some more ram. Right now I only have 512 and in places like Orgrimmar I lag fairly badly. You should have seen my comp go crazy when we did a double 40 man raid on Ironforge a couple days ago

Maybe I should just stick with something more along the lines of the 9800 pro and put that saved money from the graphics card towards upgrading other parts in my computer.

My guess is that if I got the 6600 GT or something better it would be restricted by my computer and not be able to perform much better than the ati 9800.

haha

Orgrimmar and Iron Forge are horrible for lag. On the Nefarious fight (we just killed Chromaggus last week, serveral first!) sever people were getting VRU recovery errors. The coding in BWL is absolutely horrible.

Anyhow...I have a decent system right now and my FPS in BWL was REALLY low. Press Cntrl + R in game to get your FPS on screen. Also...running addons will slow the game down, that's why Ram is so important.

If you go with any of those Video Cards you mentioned you won't go wrong.

michael_w

Cool. I'll keep looking for good prices on the cards. I just turned down all the video settings to minimum and I'm getting about 8 fps :rolleyes: I use ct mod and I can't live without it!! I think I'll snatch that hauppauge 150 tuner and then give myself some time to find a good deal on a video card. Probably get some more ram soon...

Thanks again for all the help guys.

billbillw

michael_w wrote:

What's with different brands offering the same video card but under their name? Like instead of it being an ATI 9600Pro it would be an MSI RX9600Pro-TD128. They both have the same specs and chipset but different brand name and usually at a lower price.

ATI is the chip manufacturer. They also design the reference card for each graphics chip and produce "built by ATI" cards.
They sell those graphics chips and the reference design to OEM manufacturers like MSI, PowerColor, and many others.

Nvidia does the same exact thing, except that Nvidia has never really produced their own cards. They only make the chips and the reference design and leave the rest up to OEM manufacturers.

Most of the time there is very little difference between designs that use the same chip unless the manufacturer decides to vary from the reference design and include faster memory or clock speeds. Some OEM manufacturers use better heat sink designs and better board construction, but most of the time, the biggest difference is in the bundled software.

michael_w

Say I were to buy a 9800 Pro... would it be best to spend the extra and get a genuine ATI card? Are there any brands to stay away from?

rnp614

Let me just say that I currently own and USED the AIW X800XT card for the LONGEST time before using a PCI Tuner card.

Let me also add that going to a Hauppage card and buying BeyondTV was probably the best thing I could've possibly done.

Video qual is subpar with the AIW X800XT, Recording programming is horrible, and the ATI interface is TERRIBLE.

Go with a good solid TV card and a 3rd party program if you want REAL functionality.

Demiurge

michael_w wrote:

Say I were to buy a 9800 Pro... would it be best to spend the extra and get a genuine ATI card? Are there any brands to stay away from?

If you're really into WoW i'd actually buy an nVidia card. Tons of coding issues in that game with ATI, despite the fact I own one and that it has everything to do with the Developer and not the card manufactuter.

billbillw

michael_w wrote:

Say I were to buy a 9800 Pro... would it be best to spend the extra and get a genuine ATI card? Are there any brands to stay away from?

Up until a this month, the advantage of buying a Genuine Built by ATI (BBA) card was a 3-year warranty. Most of the OEM brands only had 1-year warranty. ATI has now reduced their BBA card warranties to 1-year.
In other words, no there is no real advantage to buying a BBA card.
You will find that ATI is the only one who makes the AIW cards though. For whatever reason, they never gave that design to the OEMs.

jcaut

billbillw wrote:

ATI is the only one who makes the AIW cards though. For whatever reason, they never gave that design to the OEMs.

They want someone to have to suffer with "Multimedia Center"
(All those who have used this program will understand)

michael_w

Little update here... last night I decided to order a Hauppauge win-tv 150. Long story short I decided to put it off until this morning so that I could save myself some money and now they're sold out I had planned on getting some ram as well because some online rebate numbers made it a good deal. (512 for about $50) So I'll be skipping buying the ram at staples and put that off but I'll try and pickup the last win-tv 150 at the staples close to work tomorrow.

As for the video card I think I'll try and snatch up a BFG GeForce 6600 GT OC for about $180 but I'm still thinking about that one...

michael_w

Well today I came home with a win-tv-150.

edit: another restart and pulling out the card again looks like it has done the trick. No more problems, yet. So far it's pretty cool but I need to figure out how I can fix this 1 second delay between the audio and the video. When I'm watching whatever is hooked up though the composite or s-video input the audio hits me about a second earlier than I see the video. I think this should be an easy fix once I get a video card so I suppose I'll have to do without HT goodness until I get a vid card.