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ATI Technologies Inc. All-in-Wonder 128 AGP 16MB

ATI Technologies Inc. All-in-Wonder 128 AGP 16MB

List Price: $229.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good all-in-one but lacks support
Review: This is a good card, with a decent speed and loads of features (comparable with matrox new g400 card at a smaller price). The real problem is support and drivers... ATI doesn't help you if you use BeOS, Linux or OS/2 (I own and use all of them) so you have to find drivers by yourself. I got beta drivers for Linux and OS/2, BeOS is still a problem for me as new 4.5.2 supposedly supports it but I couldn't figure out how can it be done. It's ok for Win98 and NT and in that case it is very good (apart from running railroad tycoon 2 in black!)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The name tells you everything
Review: This is really a superb card for everyone who want to have all features in it and is not extremely demanding. If you need to play Quake 3 on 1600×1200 with immense depth and rendering etc. you probably won't be very pleased with it, but if you are an average user who plays not too demanding games, works with documents, watches TV, records some shows etc. you'll find it great. I must also state that I haven't experienced any troubles (yet) in over half a year. Works excellent for me. Highly recomended.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Outstanding product,, great services, but with some glitches
Review: To start off I didn't buy this particular model, I bought the very first ATI All-In-Wonder-Pro that ATI first came out with, but looking at the technical data on this device, it's pretty much the same thing but with more memeory for Video and DVD support. I'll first list it's good things.

If you like doing interesting things with your computer like me, then this is defenitely one thing you should get. This card gives you the services of Digital VCR, Digital Recorder, TV Tuner, Video Out mode, and DVD support. With this one card that I have in my computer I'm able to hook up my VCR to the card, and since my VCR has two Video inputs itself, I have an N64 and another VCR plugged into the computer. All in all the card allows me to have two VCR's and the N64 plugged into the computer. And this is all in digital quality. You get amazing looking images from your videotapes or your games, seeing them like you've never seen them before. It still amazes me how great my VHS tapes look when filtered through this card. Then, I didn't even buy a monitor when I bought the computer tower. Instead, knowing that this allows for Video-Out mode onto a TV, I'm currently typying this on a 27-inch TV monitor. That definetely beats out the largest Computer monitor you can find on the market. Then, with the Digital VCR option I'm able to record anything I want from the VCR onto my computer, including the TV channels my VCR outputs. You may ask yourself, why would you do that when that takes up so much space and instead you can record it on tape. That's true, but with the VideoWave CD-ROM that came with card I can play around with the material that was recorded, editing it, putting in special effects, and eventually being able to output it back onto tape. As for the DVD support, mine didn't come with that, but I imagine that all it is is just software. You won't be able to play a DVD on your computer unless you have an actual DVD-ROM drive, then with this DVD support I imagine you'll be able to do such things as record the DVD and play around with hit.

Now for the setbacks. Like some reviewrs mentioned earlier, there are some glithches that came with the card. When I first installed it, the optioins to have Digital VCR, TV tuner, or Digital Recorder were never available. The icons were simply not on the screen. I contacted ATI, and again like the previous reviewrs mentioned, it takes a while for them to answer back. However when they did, they provided me with the information I needed to know to fix this, in simple idiot-proof steps. But still, it was a pain to try and figure out first why those options weren't ready upon installation. Secondly, that TV-Out option is great, watching the computer display on the TV is defenitely better than on any smaller computer monitor, but only if you don't mind having the images slightly blurred. It's not the cards fault, it's the TV's. Since most TV's do not have the high resolution as some computer monitors do, when you install this you may be asking yourself why some of the smaller letters look slightly blurred. Games look great though, there's no impact there, but it's only if you're reading something that's really small, like fine print. That becomes a problem. And thirdly, the Video memory. Mine boasted 7MB, this one says 16MB. If you're planning on doing some serious video editing, or setting your games on the highest possible standard, this just isn't enough. On video, when you're storing video onto memory or retooling it, because of the small MB size this takes a while. On games, the MB size is a joke. If you're running games like Half-Life on the highest settings, be prepared to see alot of ping problems. But then again this card wasn't meant for games specifically. Something like Voodoo, or more SYNdram memory is better for that. I'm using the larger video memory that my computer came with myself. Another memory problem is again not the cards fault. If you're planning on doing some video editing or recording, be prepared to have some serious hard drive space for that. Great looking recorded images take up a lot of space, but an alternative is that if you don't mind the Digital Recorder comes with several modes of compression, easing the memory it eats.

So overall, I gave this four stars for its outstanding services that it provides, minus the one star for some of it's glitches. I highly recommend purchasing this as soon as possible if you want to do incredible things with your computer.


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