I'm gonna have to dis agree with you on this one, subhuman. ATi has been offering its All-In-Wonder line of cards practically longer than Asus has been in existence. And truthfully, you're better set with the Radeon. ATi has a more refined video capabilities and keeps updating and upgrading them with each iteration of them. Lets look at what you're doing. You're basically investing in a card with extensive video in/out features, meaning you're going to want the card to last as long as possible.
Despite the fact the Geforce 2 chip is an excellent chip for todays games, it won't be able to hold itself up when newer games come out. The Radeon has a 3 texture two pixel pipe whereas the Geforce 2 has a 2 texture, 4 pixel pipe. Current crop of games only make use of 2 texturing units. So right now the Radeons 3rd texture units are basically wasted. But tomorrows games will feature all sorts of new texturing effects such as bump mapping, and the Geforce 2 will end up wasting extra cycles trying to render more than 2 texture units, while the Radeon will experience no slowdown. Also, the Geforce has a limited featureset when compared to the Radeon. The Radeon is a full-fledged next-generation directx 8 part, while the GF2 chip simply supports only todays crop of features. And hyper-z technology in the Radeon closes the performance gap quite well when it comes to all applications of gaming. The GF2 will give you what you need right now, while the Radeon still has much of its capabilities untapped still, and in about 90% of the scenarios you place it in, the Radeon is just about as fast as the Geforce 2. Plus factor in the Geforces subpar 2d and 3d quality. And there is still much I haven't mentioned when it comes to the benefits of Radeons 3d applications. But of course you were looking at video capability as well.
As I said before, ATi has had much experience with video applications. The first thing I must mention is that if you're going to be using your card for video applications, you want the best 2d quality you can get. ATi's 2d quality has been equal to matrox's, where as nVidia's has always been lacking in that department. Next to be mentioned is ATi's superb dvd playback. Not only does their implementation take 40% of the decoding strain off of the host processor, their method of motion compensation is much more effective quality wise than nVidias. There is a 9 bit error term that most companies truncate to 8 bits for convenience, resulting in loss of quality. ATi's implementation uses the full 9 bits to maintain visual quality. Also, ATi is the only company to offer adaptive de-interlacing for enhanced dvd playback quality. Next is ATi's DVI support. ATi's card supports both DVI and CRT output by switching out a small adapter on the back of the card, so you have the option of both. The Asus card only has support for DVI, but there's no way to plug it into the card, it only has a standard vga port and no DVI port. Because of the lack of space on the back of the card, ATi has an adapter similar to the V3 3500 that sits quietly on your desk offering you more connection options such as composite audio/video and S-video input. Not only that, but you have an additional cable that gives you the options between various types of outputs including: S-Video out, composite audio/video out, mini-stereo audio out, and a S/PDIF RCA jack out. If you plan on using the TV tuning abilities on the card. When it comes to software, ATi supports various 3rd party software such as Guide+ TV lister, Timeshifting and much of the same video editing software that it has been using for a while (only updated versions, which I might add, ASUS uses as well). ATi's MPEG-2 playback and encoding is also a better implimentation than ASUS'. ATi also has some of its own space saving formats to contribute to the mix, and I believe that ASUS has no proprietary formats, and only depends on widely used formats such as mpeg-2, which it does a poor job of playing back and compressing. Tomshardware does a good job of putting both cards through stress tests so if you want go to
www.tomshardware.com and take a look at his articles. They're really informative. I have to dispute Toms numbers in the 3D tests though, simply because I own a Radeon 64 VIVO and I myself have recieved much higher scores in Quake 3 on an Athlon kx-700 system. If you're looking for a good 3d comparison, go to
www.firingsquad.com,
www.sharkyextreme.com, or
www.anandtech.com as I don't put much stock in Toms numbers. He might test the video capabilities of these cards well, but those numbers in 3d don't seem entirely accurate.
As for ATi's driver record, yeah they've had a few skeletons in their closet, especially with the Rage 128. But since the Radeons release, I myself have downloaded about 6 different sets of drivers that have been posted officially by ATi or leaked and have had speed increases and improved functionality with each set. There have been only two glaring flaws in ATi's Radeon, compatibility with the CD Revision of KX chipsets and a 16 bit texturing flaw. Within the first week of owning my Radeon (and the first week of its release) they had a new driver that fixed both issues. The Geforce, however, has many issues with just about all Athlon chipsets. It hasn't had much difficulty with Intel chipsets, but I've had friends with BX motherboards who have had some difficulty getting their Geforce 2's to work. My Radeon 64 VIVO installed flawlessly on my super 7 motherboard, my bx board, and after the driver fix, my kx system as well. I've also had great results from every game I have played. The Geforce line has had a great refresh with the detonator 3 drivers which give them a considerable speed boost in 3d applications, but the drivers are extremely buggy, and may or may not work with your setup. If they don't work with your setup, then you're stuck with performance slightly lower to equivalent of a Radeon card. Right now, when it comes to a combination of 3D and video features, the Radeon is really your best option. If you're looking for a strong 3d performer for TODAYS games, then the Geforce 2 would probably be a better solution, if the detonator 3 drivers work on your system. If they don't, then you're better off sticking with the Radeon. Their 3d image quality is far superior to nVidias and if you're stuck with D2 drivers, then you might as well get the performance of the Radeon. Again, Geforce 2 is strictly a gaming card for todays games. Radeons All in Wonder is a better card for tomorrows games and has better video functionality.
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