Customer Reviews

ATI Technologies Inc. All-in-Wonder 128 AGP 16MB

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Hi all,

Well, I was the first to buy one of these cards inSouth Africa. And yes there were some pitfalls, but I'll get intothose later ...

At the price it is a great card. DVD facilities, digital VCR, graphics accelerator and a whole host of usefull software included in the bundle.

The graphics of the card are great, I was originally going for the 32M Riva TNT but when I saw the features of this card I was sold. Playing Half-life, Unreal, Speed 3, Star-Wars pod racer I have NO complaints - this card does what it's supposed to ...

As far as the pitfalls go, Hmmmmmm , documentation inside the box , well, it is in all languages possible but doesn't really tell you much !

I was trying to read German to see if there was anything that was skipped out in the English version ! There is an on-line fault reporting service but they do take their time replying but they did manage to clear up one of my problems - I am still waiting for a reply for the other.

I would really reccomend a large hard drive for the video capture feature, the files are BIG when saved in editable formats - but the software bundle does include a utility to compress the video into MPEG2 format which is a lot smaller but is still big.

All in all, yes I would reccomend this card, I mean look at all of the features compared to a Voodoo/Riva - fair enough, their graphics may be marginally better but video capture,editing,video output and others are a very usefull thing !

Later,

Mark

This card was incredible when it was released (now almost 3years ago)! However, this video card is really starting to show its age...

Since this card was released, ATI has release 3 new All-In-Wonders (All-in-Wonder 128 32 Meg, All-in-Wonder 128 Pro 32 Meg, and All-in-Wonder 128 Pro 16 Meg)! A fourth, newer revision will be released later this month (The new All-In-Wonder Radeon).

...While this older card still does a solid job with video captures, contemporary games struggle to cope with the card based on the original Rage 128 chipset (most games are too choppy to play now) as well as other tasks.

Steer clear of this card until a newer version is offered...

I have had good luck getting the AIW 128 AGP to run on a PII, 300mhz, with Win 95B - but the installation and setup was a bear. You MUST plan on downloading the most recent drivers, as the ones supplied are full of bugs. Rearranging the hardware interconnections on an existing system is also a bit tricky because it is poorly documented. And, unfortunately, it seems like the tech support people at ATI will go to any length to avoid answering questions directly. You will be referred to their website repeatedly, instead of being assisted. This might be ok, but the troubleshooting info on the website is very superficial and full of disclaimers (there are some other good sources of help, such as CNET, since the product is so popular). It would be a good idea to see if you can find a few other people who have this board up and running, so that you can get advice if you need it.

Back to the board... The TV tuner works great, allowing me to use the computer monitor for Playstation. Also, the graphics acceleration may not be state of the art, but my 3D games run smoothly and the board cleared up several 2D problems I was experiencing.

Regarding comments on the OS. My guess is that this is a WIN 95/98 product, pure and simple. ATI has gone on to other things and probably will have questionable support for NT, 2000, etc.

I purchased the ATI All In Wonder mid 1999. I've never been impressed by the value of ATI products, but I hoped it would be different... I was wrong. I used the software briefly on a Windows 98 computer, but when I gave it a video speed test for 2D and 3D, it rated only a fraction of the speed of the average Creative Lab's card (18 points compared to 95). I moved it to the only other computer that I could, which was a Windows NT 4.0 system. Unfortunately, they don't tell you in their brochure that the software for this card is highly crippled when using it on NT... the capture drivers don't work within other programs, most TV features don't work, etc. When I upgraded to Windows 2000 in February of 2000, ATI's web site promised to have driver's for Windows 2000 ready for March. In March I checked in and they promised them by April... April, they promised them in May, etc., etc. As of December 2000, they STILL didn't have the drivers ready. Finally, out of desperation, I tried using their 'special purpose drivers', which are test versions, and it brought down my whole system. These 'special' driver's cannot be uninstalled once they're installed. I've written to them several times, but they've never responded. I've even written to them using my company's name, hoping to get a response that way, but nothing!

I highly recommend NOT buying this, nor any other ATI product... not entirely because of the quality of the card, but for the extreme lack of quality within the company's support policies. My only regret was not being able to give this card a '0' star rating.

This is a good card, with a decent speed and loads of features (comparable with matrox new g400 card at a smaller price). The real problem is support and drivers... ATI doesn't help you if you use BeOS, Linux or OS/2 (I own and use all of them) so you have to find drivers by yourself. I got beta drivers for Linux and OS/2, BeOS is still a problem for me as new 4.5.2 supposedly supports it but I couldn't figure out how can it be done. It's ok for Win98 and NT and in that case it is very good (apart from running railroad tycoon 2 in black!)

This is really a superb card for everyone who want to have all features in it and is not extremely demanding. If you need to play Quake 3 on 1600×1200 with immense depth and rendering etc. you probably won't be very pleased with it, but if you are an average user who plays not too demanding games, works with documents, watches TV, records some shows etc. you'll find it great. I must also state that I haven't experienced any troubles (yet) in over half a year. Works excellent for me. Highly recomended.

If you buy any card from ATI, this is what you can expect. 1) the card might, or might not work on the operating system of choice, particularly NT4, or NT2000 or might be severely limited. 2) almost non-existent customer service 3) you get to test their software and drivers since they don't seem to do that before releasing. 4) you get to hang out with lots of other angry users in the newsgroups. 5) tv-out is no better than most other scan converters 6) dvd playback is consistently better and less troublesome with other cards, like hollywood magic 6) you can get a better performing graphics card for much less than this card.

I thought this product was ok at first but to great at any one thing. But while upgrading os's some of the drivers where not up to date and would not work properly(some drivers for win98, all for win2k, most for win me).So i tried the web site for updates, but could only find them for the 2d/3d and not for the other features build into the card. But they do have a new install cd you can purchase with updated drivers for the video capture and other features other than 2d/3d.

I feel that if you buy the product the support should go with it, not at an extra charge.If ATI build the product they should provide the drivers required to use it .

To start off I didn't buy this particular model, I bought the very first ATI All-In-Wonder-Pro that ATI first came out with, but looking at the technical data on this device, it's pretty much the same thing but with more memeory for Video and DVD support. I'll first list it's good things.

If you like doing interesting things with your computer like me, then this is defenitely one thing you should get. This card gives you the services of Digital VCR, Digital Recorder, TV Tuner, Video Out mode, and DVD support. With this one card that I have in my computer I'm able to hook up my VCR to the card, and since my VCR has two Video inputs itself, I have an N64 and another VCR plugged into the computer. All in all the card allows me to have two VCR's and the N64 plugged into the computer. And this is all in digital quality. You get amazing looking images from your videotapes or your games, seeing them like you've never seen them before. It still amazes me how great my VHS tapes look when filtered through this card. Then, I didn't even buy a monitor when I bought the computer tower. Instead, knowing that this allows for Video-Out mode onto a TV, I'm currently typying this on a 27-inch TV monitor. That definetely beats out the largest Computer monitor you can find on the market. Then, with the Digital VCR option I'm able to record anything I want from the VCR onto my computer, including the TV channels my VCR outputs. You may ask yourself, why would you do that when that takes up so much space and instead you can record it on tape. That's true, but with the VideoWave CD-ROM that came with card I can play around with the material that was recorded, editing it, putting in special effects, and eventually being able to output it back onto tape. As for the DVD support, mine didn't come with that, but I imagine that all it is is just software. You won't be able to play a DVD on your computer unless you have an actual DVD-ROM drive, then with this DVD support I imagine you'll be able to do such things as record the DVD and play around with hit.

Now for the setbacks. Like some reviewrs mentioned earlier, there are some glithches that came with the card. When I first installed it, the optioins to have Digital VCR, TV tuner, or Digital Recorder were never available. The icons were simply not on the screen. I contacted ATI, and again like the previous reviewrs mentioned, it takes a while for them to answer back. However when they did, they provided me with the information I needed to know to fix this, in simple idiot-proof steps. But still, it was a pain to try and figure out first why those options weren't ready upon installation. Secondly, that TV-Out option is great, watching the computer display on the TV is defenitely better than on any smaller computer monitor, but only if you don't mind having the images slightly blurred. It's not the cards fault, it's the TV's. Since most TV's do not have the high resolution as some computer monitors do, when you install this you may be asking yourself why some of the smaller letters look slightly blurred. Games look great though, there's no impact there, but it's only if you're reading something that's really small, like fine print. That becomes a problem. And thirdly, the Video memory. Mine boasted 7MB, this one says 16MB. If you're planning on doing some serious video editing, or setting your games on the highest possible standard, this just isn't enough. On video, when you're storing video onto memory or retooling it, because of the small MB size this takes a while. On games, the MB size is a joke. If you're running games like Half-Life on the highest settings, be prepared to see alot of ping problems. But then again this card wasn't meant for games specifically. Something like Voodoo, or more SYNdram memory is better for that. I'm using the larger video memory that my computer came with myself. Another memory problem is again not the cards fault. If you're planning on doing some video editing or recording, be prepared to have some serious hard drive space for that. Great looking recorded images take up a lot of space, but an alternative is that if you don't mind the Digital Recorder comes with several modes of compression, easing the memory it eats.

So overall, I gave this four stars for its outstanding services that it provides, minus the one star for some of it's glitches. I highly recommend purchasing this as soon as possible if you want to do incredible things with your computer.

I have the 32MB version of this card in my (Dual boot Win98/2000 (linux when I get 'round to it) SCSI based Athlon) system. The DVD players are not reliable. I can't watch a movie in Win '98 without having at least a couple problems. Trying to watch one in Win2000, I'd have to reboot several times to get thru a movie. Win2000 beta support (versions 40wb10 and 70wb19) is weak; I sent in detailed problem reports ages ago. No response (admittedly they're in beta), but I'd expect at LEAST a new beta to have been released in the past few months. Winamp visualizations seem to cause W2k hangs too. The TV image is great, but the tv viewer also hangs quite often. (The system is reliable with basic stuff like MS Office & web dev tools.) The digital VCR only records at 25-30 frames a second. So I can't do 60fps to use like a TiVo, and can't do 2-10 frames a second for streaming over the web.