AIW users..come on in.

[rbV5]

I have been playing around a little with the new MMC 8.8 and Cat 3.10 drivers. I have to tell you, MMC's new MPEG-4 capture codec is fantastic! With very little tweaking to the home theater preset, I have produced the best analog video captures I have ever pulled out of my PC...period. No dropped frames, stable and snappy...like MMC should be!

Just in case you haven't tried it yet, I think its worthy of your attention. If you have tried it, I'm up for a little discussion on what your experience with it is. What have you tried...settings you're using, ect.

Nice job on this one ATI!

 

[TrailerParkKing]

I just got my AIW 9700pro... traded my 9800np flashed to pro for it.... i am still amazed by how much it can do..... a little lost honestly....but i will have to go try this now....

I will be back!!! LOL

 

[NicColt]

rb do you remember a few years back when I got my original AIW. Well guess what I just got an AIW9800 Pro and it's being sent back to have it replaced. me and you need to have a private thread.

I havent checked out the mpeg4 yet but recording with mpeg1 is much nicer...

 

[rbV5]

Problems with a new AIW 9800pro? Yikes, thats a bummer..you sure have crap luck with your AIW cards. Hopefully the replacement will work right out of the box so you can enjoy it.

I just finished upgrading my AIW 7500 rig, and the same MPEG-4 capture settings are just a bit much for the duron900 AIW7500 combo, she's dropping ~1% to 2% of frames, not suprising. Installation went fine, and all seems OK with both AIW rigs.

 

[Genx87]

I have a brand new 9600 Pro AIW sitting in a box waiting for christmas to be opened

 

[NicColt]

Can someone explain this to me. According to Anandtech's Article "The Radeon 9600 XT GPU now runs at 500MHz, a 25% increase in clock speed over the 9600 Pro?s 400MHz clock."

The AIW 9800 Pro has a core of 380 and 340 memmory. How can the 9600 Pro have a faster core than the AIW 9800 Pro ?

 

[rbV5]

How can the 9600 Pro have a faster core than the AIW 9800 Pro ?

The AIW 9600 pro is built on the .13 micron process compared to the .15 micron process used on the 9800. It also has fewer transistors. All that = less heat generated, which = higher clockspeed possible.

 

[CarpeDiem99]

9800 pro has 8 pipelines while 9600 pro has 4 pipelines, thats the reason

 

[rbV5]

9800 pro has 8 pipelines while 9600 pro has 4 pipelines, thats the reason

The 8 pipelines adds significantly to the transistor count, so that certainly increases the heat output of the 9800 core, but the higher core clockspeed of the 9600 is much more the result of the smaller .13 micron process than the fewer pipelines.

 

[NicColt]

> Problems with a new AIW 9800pro? Yikes, thats a bummer..you sure have crap luck with your AIW cards.

when I got my original AIW Radeon four years ago it took me like 10-12 months to get all the bugs out and for it to work properly, and all of a sudden it's as if I hit that magic driver that fixed everything and all games and MMC worked flawlessly and it has worked perfect ever since.

Two weeks ago I decide to upgrade my entire system and boom the only thing that didn't work was the AIW 9800 Pro. 2D was perfect but in games this is what it did wolf01.jpg no matter what I did, I would get pixels all over the screen. I have 3 games installed and it did the same thing in MOH:AA and Unreal2 and after a minute or two they would crash to the desktop.

After 2 weeks of reformatting and installing XP and Win2K and trying every possible setting it still didn't clear it up. On wednesday I was reading a post on another forum and suggested that I reduce the memmory and loaded up rage3d Tweak and brought the memmory all the way down and nothing still the same thing, I brought the core down to the lowest possible setting and the white dots nearly all went away. I was able to load MOH and Unreal2 with nearly no pixels just a few but they would only play for short periods of time like 5-10 minutes before dropping to the desktop. By dropping the core it's as if it nearly fixed it.

Even at default core speed of 380 it's as if the card was acting as if it was extremely overclocked and overheating. The retail store I bought it from has a policy to test the card to see if it's defective before just replacing it so they will do that either today or this weekend, so I'm still waiting for that.

In the mean time I put in my original AIW Radeon and everything was perfect. no pixels MMC runs great, I'm able to play those 3 games for hours with no problems. Well I've stopped playing Unreal2 since it just doesn't have enough juice but MOH and Wolf plays great.

I just have to be patient.

Here's my new system the AIW 9800 Pro will go in.

Antec 3700-QBE lined with Akasa Pax-Mate
with 120mm Enermax Adj. Fan in front and Vantec Fan controller.
Antec True-Blue 480Watt PSU
Asus K8V Deluxe with AMD64 3200+.
2x512 Kingston HyperX PC3500
ATI AIW 9800 Pro
3x160 Gig Seagate Barracuda SATA drives
Plextor PX-708A DVDRW
LG CD-RW GCE-8320B
Microsoft Multimedia Natural Keyboard
Monitor HP P1110 Trinitron FD
Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro with Megaworks 550's

 

[InlineFive]

Hmm. I have been looking for a good TV-Tuner but none fit the bill...

Does anyone know if MMC will work with an ATI PCI tuner? I have a Radeon 9600 Pro so I don't think there will be any compatibility problems.

 

[matrixwalker]

yeah, 8.8 is the first one to provide unified support for all ATI products (radeon, aiw, tv wonders). It worked okay on my system with a radeon 7500 and tv wonder pro, but had problems recording, but i guess that was something wrong with the system as it needs to be reformatted. I haven't tried it on my AIW 8500 yet.

 

[rbV5]

Here's my new system the AIW 9800 Pro will go in

Niiiice rig tha'll be

 

[NicColt]

>Niiiice rig tha'll be

hey it's better than my Original AIW Radeon with original Asus A7V (not even the 133) with PC100 memory : )

Well some good news, the store checked it out themselves and they confirmed that there was something wrong with it and they have a brand new card waiting for me to pick up on Tuesday. Will update you later to see if my problems were fixed.

About the case.
Before on my old case the fans were so loud (even though I though they were quiet) that you could not hear the HD's and it made a constant fan noise.... the difference now and just to give you an idea how quiet this case is, now the loudest parts of the system are the Baracuda's and they are some of the most quiet HD's out there, you hear them spinning, so no constant hum and that's the downside of having a near dead silent case.

Now if only someone could confirm about playing MOH:AA in 32Bits with the CAT's 3.10 wihtout any problems.

 

[rbV5]

Now if only someone could confirm about playing MOH:AA in 32Bits with the CAT's 3.10 wihtout any problems

Confirmed, no problems here.

 

[NicColt]

would you believe it more bad news, the darn store gave me back my same box with a used card in it. I should have checked it at the store. The clerk said "we've replaced it with a brand new off the shelf card" GGGRRrrrr. I opened the box and it was in an old plastic bag not the one ATI normally uses and it wasnt even sealed.

The problem with that is that I don't know how long it could have been used and if it's been overclocked to hell or not. When you pay retail you get the certification that it's a new unused card and that it's hasen't been overclocked.

So on xmas day I put the card in and I get the infamous Cold Boot problem. The graphics in the bios is all corrupted and I have to reboot 3 sometimes 4 times before getting a good screen.

Now I have to call them back on Monday asking why they gave me a used card that has problems and I will demand to have a new sealed card. The video card pain continues.

 

[rbV5]

The video card pain continues.

My Gawd you have the WORST luck. Seriously.

 

[NicColt]

Well rb some good news and some bad news.... First the good news, the store admitted that one of the jobbers there should not have given me a used card so they have ordered a brand new card and they will call me when their stock is in.

Now, I went to put an old family reunion tape I had and boom the most hated word in the ATI dictionary
......+++++ MACROVISION +++++..... I have macrovision on every damm tape now, personal ones, commercial ones which I expected, ANY tape I put in now has macrovision. I installed the macrovision buster from doom9 and still nothing works to bust mv on this AIW-9800 Pro. I was reading that they may have put MV at the bios or hardware level and/or anything past MMC 8.1

Any clues or suggestions apart from a video stabilizer ?

I sitll have my older computer with the original AIW Radeon which I had disabled the macrovision and everything worked fine and I was waiting for this new computer to do the recordings. Now unless I find a macrovsion buster for the 9800 Pro I'll have to setup my older computer again just to record tapes GGGGRRRRRR

I've also read that with macrovision you can't view DVD's higher than 480i is that true.

Edit: sorry I just put in another personal tape and that one doesn't have macrovision, some do some dont'... what a pain.

 

[rbV5]

have put MV at the bios or hardware level and/or anything past MMC 8.1

Macrovision is always with the content..not the hardware. Only commercial Media and PPV broadcasts (or copies of them) normally contain macrovision protection and ATI drivers have had macrovision detection for as long as I remember. You shouldn't be getting that with your own recorded tapes, so something is wrong with your card, drivers, cables or the signal from your VCR.

I've also read that with macrovision you can't view DVD's higher than 480i is that true

Not true. You can't output DVD's greater than 480"p" using component output (note:which is the resolution of DVD's btw) without using some 3rd party solutions. I can output at 1080i using the Radeon to scale it, and using VGA to my Widescreen and it looks great. I also have the T-2 extreme edition DVD which has a 1080p Windows media version. Aside from a somewhat PITA DRM scheme, it plays great on the desktop and looks fabulous on the big screen (again using VGA)

 

[petery83]

i switched from an AIW Radeon to an AIW 9600 pro, and I love it!

 

[NicColt]

ok here's the thing, I just re-started my older computer with the original AIW radeon with the MV disabled and it works. Same patch doesn't work on AIW 9800 Pro and latest MMC and drivers.

Is there a patch for the 9800 Pro or am I to understand that backing up DVD's is easier than VHS tapes ???

 

[rbV5]

Is there a patch for the 9800 Pro or am I to understand that backing up DVD's is easier than VHS tapes ???

Depends on your method, my folks have a GoVideo dual VHS recorder that makes backing up VHS easy. Its always been easier to "rip" a DVD after copy protection was defeated than to capture a VHS tape with a PC. If its a copywrited VHS tape, even more so. Ripping a DVD gives you an exact copy of the original with hardly more effort than copying it to your hardrive, however analog capture from low resolution VHS tapes basically gives you a lower quality version that requires some real effort with a PC. If its a macrovision protected VHS tape, you have to defeat the macrovision otherwise you are done. For me, the poor quality of VHS just isn't worth the hassle so I'm not sure what macrovision defeats are available.

I'd say, just use your older rig to backup your macrovision protected VHS tapes if you can't find a solution.

 

[NicColt]

>I'd say, just use your older rig to backup your macrovision protected VHS tapes if you can't find a solution.

Yea that's what I'll have to do. I have about 80 or so tapes that I wanted to copy into my collection before the tapes go bad, I'm already noticing some static and shimmering on a few tapes. I was waiting all this time to do it with my new AIW but all that time wasted : )

Sometimes when I'm at work during the night shift I like to watch some of my movies on the computer and quality isn't the first priority. We also have a collection of movies that are just mpeg and I was going to add these 80 or so tapes to them.

Now I wonder if this is a MMC thing, what if I uninstall mmc 8.8 and install mmc 7.1 I wonder if the patch would work.
===

Edit: look at the second post in this Rage thread very interesting.

Edit2: Well I may just get this baby to fix my problem. It's BS like this that forces us to use hacks and cracks in order to protect our fair use rights.

 

[NicColt]

Well even with the patch and with mv disabled the captures still look like crap. It plays fine on mmc 8.8 but it's terrible on mmc 7.1 and I can't defeat mv at %100 on the mmc 8.8

I won't even bother with the sima scc if the recording will end up like this, it looks like I'll have to implement my own brand of justice to enforce my fair use rights.