An All in Wonder Radeon from ATI?

[Spence]

will there be such a thing, and if so when?

And when are the original radeons gonna start being sold, i heard sometime this month

 

[The Stigenator]

I Heard the Rage 128 were the last of the All in Wonder series.
That according to ATI.. check their website - might have to do a search.

 

[Spence]

yeah i could get an All in wonder off my brother but its agp and that would mean replacing my card for it, I plan on upgrading cards anyway so I was thinking the TV editing capabilities would come in hand

But maybe theres an easier way, im trying to clean up some of my old videos, are there any programs that can help me do that?

 

[piku]

ATI is stupid for doing that... that line was always their biggest strength. Almost every ATI new chipset was reviewed like "The 3d alone card was only a so-so performer, but their All In Wonder card is a great value providing alright 3D with fantastic video power and tools."

 

[Mday]

this is ATI's nest egg in retail, OF COURSE there will be.

--

i can't believe the video wonder was cancelled...

 

[Handle]

I know about the Video Wonder... I was saving up for that thing, then it was cancelled.

 

[Imaginer]

Canceling All in Wonder series?!!!

What are they thinking! Those cards alone are what makes them stand out. If it wasn't for the AIW original, I would still have kept that separate TV and Trident 2mb video card.

Sure 3D performance is ok since I have such an old card but the features are the sweet spots. Why stop a good thing?

 

[CQuinn]

Guys, calm down.

First, Spence - I think that the Radeon CHIPS are shipping this month, which means that you can expect to see products based on
these chips in the retail market by the third or fourth quarter
of 2000.

Second, no one said they were canceling the All-in-Wonder series.
The_Good_Guy is only passing on what he may have heard at one point.
And while I have not been able to find that information at their web
site, I have found a few interesting press items there:

For starters:
http://www.ati.com/na/pages/corporate/press/2000/4305.html



<< According to PC Data, ATI's All-in-Wonder 128 32MB was again the leading product in terms of revenue sold through distribution in May 2000. >>




And from the original press release for Radeon:
http://www.ati.com/na/pages/showcase/radeon/press.html



<< Video Immersion?
RADEON 256 advances ATI's leadership in digital video with more new features, including on-chip Motion Compensation, IDCT, and MPEG acceleration. The RADEON 256 incorporates advanced video technology inherited from ATI's video oriented set-top box and consumer electronics products. Key consumer video applications like DVD, DTV, time-shifting and digital VCR all benefit from the chips advanced feature set. The ability to decode all the HDTV formats with reduced CPU utilization, and directly drive both analog and DVI digital high definition displays without the need for external hardware, make RADEON 256 the world's best platform for PC-based HDTV. Coupled with ATI's RAGE THEATER? analog encoder/decoder chip, RADEON 256 provides a complete convergence solution.

The list of ATI unique video features includes:

High quality video filters capable of operating at full HDTV resolutions
On-chip HDTV decoder which eliminates the requirement for separate HDTV decoder cards which add cost and reduce picture quality
On-chip HDTV display interface for new HDTV displays
On-chip transport stream interface to connect directly to DTV tuner boards
Patent pending adaptive de-interlacing algorithms which result in unparalleled video quality for interlaced TV and HDTV video streams

&quot;The MPEG acceleration in the RADEON 256 is very impressive in that it will let the PC platform decode an HDTV signal while at the same time doing MPEG picture in picture,&quot; stated Dave Marsh, technical evangelist, TV and video, Microsoft. &quot;Couple this with the dramatically improved video de-interlacing and the well implemented multi-tap scaling, and the PC becomes an even better solution for all aspects of TV and video entertainment.&quot;
>>



=====
My opinion (please add grains of salt as needed)

1. ATI needs a good business plan right now, not only to insure future profit, but also to keep their current market value in a healthy state. Even if they are planning on positioning Radeon as a killer 3D chip, they have to pay attention to their bottom line in regard to future sales opportunities.
   
2. They *know* that their best area of recent revenue came from sales of the All-in-Wonder and TV-Wonder products. And that is likely to remain a strong growth area as companies like Apple (with the iMac), Microsoft (with WindowsME), and even emerging systems such as BeOS starting to push video capture and editing as strong marketing points for their platforms.
   
3. ATI's Third Quarter results admit that RAGE 128 PRO can no longer be marketed as a top-of-the line product.
   http://www.ati.com/na/pages/corporate/investor_relations/2000/ATIQ300.pdf
   Which means they should start looking for a new technology base for their product lines, and just so happen to have Radeon positioned to take over.
   
4. No company in their right mind would undermine sales of one product by convincing their customers to wait for &quot;the next big thing&quot;. So right now, it is in ATI's best interest to keep quiet about products they are planning to bring out, but that probably won't be available until late 2000/early 2001.
   http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&amp;threadid=196883
   
5. The Radeon looks like it is designed not only as a killer 3D chip, but almost as an &quot;all-in-wonder&quot; chip on its own. Which means that some of the engineers behind it were already thinking about features that could be used in future AIW products.

Right now, I'm budgeting for a AIW 128 pro (as soon as the Win2000 drivers are stable, and hopefully the Xfree4 drivers too); because I don't expect to see any Radeon based cards before the Christmas season.
I will also be passing on a nice note on to ATI, encouraging them to make producing an All-in-Wonder Radeon based card a serious consideration; but I suspect they are already working on versions of that, just as they did with the Rage 128 chipset.

 

[Spence]

i doubt that whole radeon chips line, since ati makes there own cards it wouldnt make much sense

I heard they were shipping the boards this month, but i wasnt sure when they would be available for me to buy

 

[CQuinn]

You can doubt it, but that was why I included the link to
ATI's third quarter results;
<a target=new href="http://www.ati.com/na/pages/corporate/investor_relations/2000/ATIQ300.pdf
">http://www.ati.com/na/pages/corporate/investor_relations/2000/ATIQ300.pdf
</a>
which says on the first page:


<< Production shipments of new RADEON chip to commence in July. >>



ATI does make their own cards, which means they have to have sufficient volumes of the chips to make them with. They also
make or sell integrated/custom products for OEMs and set-top
box makers.

You see, from the companies point of view, the chip is the product
they are primarily selling. The cards are just an additional product built around the chip. They need to cover orders from the
system manufacturers first, because that is their biggest source
of revenue, before they worry about getting cards onto CompUSA
shelves. That includes cards, and chips to integrate into motherboards or other products. They would also want to provide
advance cards to OEMs and Media outlets like Anandtech, to try
and generate some hype to advance sales.

If they were shipping boards this month, then you could expect to
see them on store shelves by August or September. But you could
also expect to see a press release from ATI, or an announcement at
some trade show, that would indicate when the buying public could
expect to get their hands on some.

 

[Bagheera]

As the matter of fact, since the Radeon chipset is fully compatible with the ATI Theatre chipset and supports up to 128 MB of RAM, I ASSUME that ATI does have something like a Radeon All in Wonder card in mind (And my belief would be based on the opinion of multiple different web sites...), but oh well...