ATI AIW Report

[imported_Husky55]

I hesitate to post about my experience with the ATI-AIW X800XL just installed on my system. I have been running Gigabyte Nvidia 6600GT on my Epox NPA9 Ultra, Athlon 64 @2.9 GHz for sometimes now. I bought the ATI-AIW X800XL knowing it would not outperform the 6600GT but for the convenience of having a TV tuner and FM radio and a hardware decoder DVD.

I have a Hauppauge TV tuner on my system and it was working flawlessly for more than a year now.

After removing the Nivida display drivers, I replaced the 6600GT with the much longer and bigger X800XL. I downloaded the newest drivers from ATITECH.com. These drivers are in 2 groups 1. display drivers 2. Multimedia Control Center drivers. They are large files

After religiously following the sequence of installation the files as directed by ATI, there was no tuner detected, graphics is OK.

I finally had to remove all the drivers installed and use the CD which came with the X800XL . Now the DVD player does not work. This is after the decoder was authenticated by ATI. I also noticed that ATI software somehow utilizes my CPU 100%. I had to reboot to return to normal.

When I use the update drivers function from the Catalyst Control Center, my TV tuner again does not work.

My posting this is to share with those who want to have a TV tuner on their system that ALL IN ONE is not the simplest way to maintain your system update or to make it work. In other words, separate the TV Tuner and the graphics card.

May be my experience is not unique and other owners of ATI AIW will chime in. I hope their experience is much better than mine.

 

[programmer]

I have an older AIW (8500) that I too had many days of troubles with. It took a long time to figure out which versions of which drivers would work, and in what specific order, or like you, various components (tuner, DVD, etc.) would fail. What a pain. Once I got it set up, I never touched it again, and its still working fine. But really, ATI should make their installations a lot easier.

 

[imported_Zeke]

I had the AIW 8500 I bought in 2002, installed first try, I loved that thing. Replaced my shiney voodoo 5, but it is now relegated to powering WoW on my friends crappy Dell (installed easily there too).

 

[imported_Husky55]

I also have an ATI-AIW 8500 bought in 2002. Same software problem then. I keep hoping that ATI had improved their AIW software package.

No luck there.

Guess I am an eternally optimistic sucker!!!

 

[AnitaPeterson]

heads-up:

I have the ATI-AIW X800XL (there was a recent promotion up here in Canada, and a lot of us Hot Deal hunters snatched it).
Since I don't care about the TV-in function/tuner, and I only use the TV-out, I just used the drivers from the ATI website.

BTW, my old card was a GF2 GTS!

I have, however, a nagging feeling that both the OP and I should have reinstalled the operating system from scratch....

 

[jelifah]

I was able to replace my Nvidia graphics card with an AIW a couple years ago. I don't recall having any crazy trouble (lucky me). But I do wonder sometimes about the ridiculous software package.

When updating your stuff for the Channel Guide it was not blatantly obvious, to me, how to filter out some or all of the channels. So if you update the channel Guide info it takes like 2-3 minutes on a decent system to download all the program info and then recompile it. It's definetly not smooth and easy.

But I really just wanted it to capture VCR Tapes, and have a nice Graphics card

Long live AGP!!

 

[imported_Zeke]

I'm starting to feel very lucky after reading this, I installed sucessfully on 3 seperate machines.

 

[Fraggable]

I didn't really have any problems with my x800xt aiw but I know they can be difficult. Make sure youre BIOS and such are updated.