AIW 9700 Pro vs. Plain 9700 Pro + PCI TV Wonder ?

[crimson117]

I currently have a trusty old Radeon All-In-Wonder 32mb. I'm upgrading to a 9700 to play SWG, but I'm not sure whether to go with the All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro or just get a cheaper plain 9700 Pro and pair it with a TV Wonder. I don't really care about the hardware mpg-2 that the AIW 9700 Pro offers, I don't do that much video encoding.

Actually, it'd be a tiny bit cheaper to go with the AIW card, but I'd rather just get a TV-tuner card that I can hang onto regardless of what 3D graphics card I have.

Any suggestions? Are their other tv-tuners that I should consider besides ATI?

 

[rbV5]

I think the AIW offers a better value overall unless you need dual heads, but look at the Leadtek and Asus seperate tuners.

 

[crimson117]

The problem I'm running into now is that the TV-tuner on my old Radeon 32mb AIW card is doing just fine, but the 3D graphics are getting old. But since they're integrated together, I can't keep just the TV-tuner part; I need to replace the whole card, thus wasting the perfectly good TV-tuner part and having to pay for it again on the next AIW card that I buy.

The clocking and performance of the 9700 PRO and the 9700 AIW PRO are equal. Aside from about $10 extra by buying two separate cards, does anyone know of any feature differences between the on-board AIW tv-tuner and a discrete ati (or other) tv-tuner?

 

[rbV5]

The problem I'm running into now is that the TV-tuner on my old Radeon 32mb AIW card is doing just fine, but the 3D graphics are getting old.

They still make a nice card for the 90% of users that don't play newer games, I've had no trouble selling my older AIW cards for a premium over their non-AIW counterpart. Another option to consider is getting a VIVO card and using a VCR for a tuner (many of the new FX cards are VIVO).

The AIW tuner is just a standard analog philips tuner, the features you lose by using a seperate card are related to the GPU/VPU, the theater 200 chip and software functionality. If you don't need features like native component output, adaptive de-interlacing, hardware MPEG-2 and now Divx hardware assist with the divx player, an HTPC frontend like EZLOOK integrated with the remote wonder, hardware video soap and the like, you won't lose much going to a seperate.

 

[Vonkhan]

I have a 9800pro, a TV Wonder VE and a Remote Wonder - all purchased separately

Works fine for me, saved a couple of $$$s and love the dual monitor setup