All-In-Wonder - Right For Me?

deckmoney

Junior Member
May 29, 2002
8
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Hello,


I am looking at building a new computer, and one of the important things to me is the video card. My motherboard (Soyo Dragon Ultra SY-P4S) has a AGP slot (I think Pro, or 4X) and I was wondering if the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV would be good for me. I'm mainly going to use it for the following things:

  • Basic Internet browsing
  • Alittle bit of gaming. Mostly games like Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2, the Sims, etc. Not highly intensive.
  • Hooking it up to my cable and using it to watch TV as I browse or chat
  • Recording TV shows using the TiVo-like software
  • Downloading DivX movies and playing them through my TV (by hooking my video card to the RCA inputs in my TV).

I won't be using it for Video Encoding as far as I know.



Are their any products that you would suggest instead?



Thank you to any replies this post might get, I don't want to spend my money on the wrong product,
Chris
 

Willoughbyva

Diamond Member
Sep 26, 2001
3,267
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I also think that you would enjoy the AIW card. Also check out the Rage3d site.

Drivers have gotten pretty good in the past few months too.

Will

Edit spelling.
 

PCHPlayer

Golden Member
Oct 9, 2001
1,053
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You may also want to check out the AIW 7500. Since you are not doing a whole lot of gaming you can save a few bucks.
 

chaotic

Member
Apr 26, 2001
173
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I bought a Radeon 7500 AIW last Saturday and promptly returned it the following Monday. I had more problems with it than I could bear. Gaming performance was excellent (there were no problems whatsoever), but the added 'features' were very buggy. The GuidePlus+ didn't work right, the TV-on-demand crashed the system, and it required much driver updating from ATI's website to get it running correctly. I was not even going to bother seeing the problems with the video capture, so I didn't even try. The system is:

WinXP Pro
ECS K7S5A mobo
Athlon T-bird 1.33GHz @ 1.33
256MB DDR

I'm sticking with Nvidia. My GF2 MX has yet to give me a single problem in the months of beating that I have given it. I have heard good things about the 8500 though, so give it a shot and if it doesn't work then return it :)
 

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
12,632
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My AIW 7500 experience is the quite the opposite of the last poster. This is my 3rd AIW card, and it is definately a mature product, with a great feature set. Video capture is excellent, especially with MMC 7.6. I use the multimedia features extensively (although, admittedly, I don't use timeshifting much), and was enjoying GTA3 on my 32" Sanyo via the TV-out before I came to work tonight....sweet. Using XP and the 6071 driver set and WDM 5118, this card is now nearly flawless IMHO.