The All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro: Before Media PC's and XP Media Center Edition came the All-in-Wonder
Written: Sep 12 '04 (Updated Oct 03 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: ThruView translucent window for Video playback, efficient high quality encoding, strong 3d gaming peformance
Cons: Difficult but frequent driver and software upgrades
The Bottom Line: The AIW 9800 Pro sets the standard for multimedia video cards, making the multimedia PC with great 3d video gaming performance a reality for many users.
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| nc10's Full Review: ATI All-In-Wonder® 9800 PRO, (128 MB) AGP Vid... |
The ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro (AIW 9800 Pro) is “the” video card for PC enthusiastics looking for high end gaming performance and a complete set of multimedia entertainment tools in one package. Released in of June 2003, the AIW 9800 Pro no longer provides “state of the art” 3D video performance for gamers, but it does hit the more affordable $200-$250 peformance“sweet spot”, a step below the new $400-$500 Radeon X800 and Geforce 6800 cards. Key specs for the AIW 9800 Pro include:
128mb DDR2 SDRAM
4X, 8X AGP
Composite, SVideo DVI output (DVI to VGA adapter included), and YPrPb Out for HDTV
DirectX 9 support
Hardware assisted MPEG2 encoding
“TIVO” like TV viewing (ATI terms it as TV-ON-DEMAND™…. records programs on your hard drive, pauses live TV and resumes broadcasts on your schedule)
Free GuidePlus TV schedule listing and Recording scheduler
THRUVIEW TV viewing, allows you to optionally make your TV vieiwing window transparent, either a small window or full screen. Allows to to see whats behind the TV screen and “click on it”
Single CRT/LCD support, but can drive a monitor and TV at the same time
In the box is a ton of stuff for your AIW 9800 Pro, including:
The card itself
A very nice RF Remote, USB receiver, and 4AAA batteries
4 cd’s, drivers Morrowind (game), Mediator 7, and Pinnacle Studio 8 (limited edition)
DVI to VGA adapter
“Y” Power Extension Cable (the AIW 9800 Pro requires its own power connection to your PC’s power supply)
6’ S-Video Cable
6’ Composite Video Cable
ATI Input and output adapters
Component Video Output adapter for HDTV connection
Providing stable high end performance for 3d gaming and strong video capture and editing tools is no small feat. If you read the reviews here on epinions and usenet and other newsgroups, you’ll quickly notice that the quest for stability and trouble free operation of video capture and 3d gaming cards is like the holy grail, complaints about gaming card performance and video capture card problems abound. ATI video drivers are much more stable than just a few years ago, and are frequently updated to address problems and/or improve performance. The multimedia software is fairly stable, especially compared to competitors like Pinnacle Systems, but you’ll still likely run into an occasional problem.
Installation
I installed the AIW 9800 Pro in a Dell 4550 desktop with 2.66ghz Pentium 4 cpu, running Windows XP, with two hard drives, a 52X CD writer, Dell 4X DVD writer and PX191 monitor. Notably, Dell rates the power supply in this system at only 250watts, while ATI recommends a minimum power supply of 300 watts. I’ve read in various user forums that Dell power supplies are rated conservatively, and felt that there was a good chance this card would work in my system. I’ve since used this card in my system for over 4 months with no problems. Installation of the AIW 9800 Pro goes a bit beyond the install routines of most of the hardware you’ll buy today, as you’ll need to
1. Ensure that your motherboard’s AGP drivers are installed (not necessary for Intel boards)
2. Uninstall old video drivers
3. Remove the old video card (or disable the onboard video) and install the new card, including plugging in a power cord to the video card
4. Connect your monitor to the DVI output on the card
5. Connect your CATV cable and/or other video inputs/outputs to the AIW 9800 Pro. (I have standard cable TV, so I just connected the cable to the AIW 9800 Pro.) There are lots of other options for connecting to TV's and other displays. The AIW 9800 Pro has 4 connections, a CATV input, a DVI out connector, and connectors for A/V input and output adapters (S Video, composite video, audio, etc). The ATI output adapter has an 1/8” audio plug which I connected to the Line In connector on my sound card. This would route the audio from the TV tuner to my sound card. I didn’t use the other output connectors, which include a S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) digital audio connector, a S Video connector and composite video connector for outputting your display to a TV, VCR, projector, or other device. I could have also used the Component Video Output adapter to connect to HDTV. (Optional)
6. Connect other inputs to the card, perhaps to capture or view the output from a VCR or videocamera, using the S-video/composite video Input adapter. (Optional)
7. Start up the PC and install the software. You’ll first install the video drivers, and then ATI’s MultiMedia Center (MMC). ATI calls their unified software video drivers “Catalyst” drivers, and the same set of drivers works for several of their video cards.
Other optional installation steps include installing the Remote and software for the remote, Morrowind, Mediator 7, and Pinnacle Studio 8.
I’ve installed the latest version of the ATI’s Catalyst drivers (posted 8/16/04) version 6.14.10.6467, the new Catalyst Control Center, and Multimedia Center 9.02. ATI releases updates frequently, and maintains previous versions on their website, in case the new version causes problems.
Updating the AIW 9800 Pro drivers and MMC software isn’t for the faint of heart, as it requires downloading the latest video drivers, MMC software, and occasionally other drivers and software, like the Catalyst Control Center. You’ll then need to uninstall your old drivers, reboot you PC w/o drivers to a 640X480 16 color display, and install the new drivers. If you’re not happy with the latest version (in my case the lastest MMC software crashes after a few minutes of TV viewing or recording), you’ll need to reinstall the old drivers, or use Windows System Restore.
Catalyst Control Center
Recently, ATI released the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) for their video drivers. The CCC runs in your system tray. If you’re using an LCD monitor that pivots, right clicking on the CCC allows you to rotate your display with a couple of clicks, and access a few other features for multimonitor setups. I've used the pivot feature with my Planar PX191 LCD monitor, and it works very well. Like all other Pivot software I've tried, it doesn't support video playback applications.
Launching the CCC brings up an application that allows you to “fine tune” your video card’s performance, balancing performance for features while seeing the effect of any changes immediately. The CCC display includes a sports car driving along a slightly winding road. Changing settings changes the details of the road, sky, car, and other features, giving you a feel for how it will impact your view in games. Users can develop and save different profiles, and switch those profiles using the CCC.
Multimedia
The AIW 9800 Pro’s strength is the power and feature set built into the MultiMedia Center (MMC) software. This software includes a full featured media player for audio and video files, a TV tuner with support for “On Demand” viewing (pause, rewind, fast forward, etc), scheduler for recording shows, very efficient capture and encoding/decoding software, and an electronic program guide (GuidePlus ). According to Gemstar/TV Guide, GuidePlus is designed to make browsing, searching, scheduling and recording television events a fun, easy and rewarding experience, a statement which is accurate, even though the EPG is not "state of the art".
After you finish installing the AIW 9800 Pro, you’ll need to set up the TV tuner software. Launching the TV tuner for the first time starts a wizard that helps you choose the right audio source (most users will connect the AIW 9800 Pro’s audio out to the Line in on their sound card), and make an initial scan for available channels. Since I’m subscribing to a “basic” cable service with about 60 channels and no “premium” channels, I don’t need a separate cable box and can connect the CATV cable into the tuner card. In my case, scanning for channels was easy. If you need an external cable box to decode your cable or satellite signal, you'll need to buy an add on RF "blaster" to signal changes to your box, a more difficult arrangement.
With the latest version (currently 9.02) of ATI’s MultiMedia Center, I found TV viewing to be stable, and in TV playback only mode, the viewer consumed only about 2-3 percent of my system’s resources, with negligible on impact on system performance. The TV (and file and DVD viewing software) is well suited to “running in the background” while you perform your normal viewing tasks, with options to set the viewing window from any size to full screen, optionally set to be “always on top of the desktop”, or run in ThruView Window or Desktop mode. In ThruView window mode, the TV viewing window is transparent and the borders are eliminated. The degree of transparency is widely adjustable. I keep the viewing window nearly opaque so I can watch easily, but still see any buttons or links behind the window. And, more importantly, your mouse can move “behind” the window so you can click on any links or buttons located under the viewing window. In ThruView Desktop mode, your desktop wallpaper is replaced with the Viewer's image, and the application(s) you're running are "translucent", allowing to focus on the TV content or the content of what ever application you are running at the time.
With TV-On-Demand viewing, MMC allows you to FF, RW, or Pause your TV viewing. To do this, MMC captures the show, encodes it, saves it to your hard drive, and then plays it back recording a split second or with a several minute delay, depending how often you pause and restart your viewing. MMC gives a wide range of options for the recording/encoding quality, with 4 presets for 320 X 240 to 720 X 480 resolution, as well user defined settings, all of which are good enough to view full screen. As expected, this requires a lot more computing horsepower. TV-On-Demand mode using up 35-45% of my systems resources. Compared to similar programs, like Snapstream’s feature packed Beyond TV3, MMC's encoders are VERY efficient, and TV-On-Demand co-exists quite well with most other routine computing.
Guide Plus (from Gemstar/TV Guide) is a free web based Electronic Program Guide (EPG) for ATI All In Wonder or TV Wonder owners. Users will need to sign up with GuidePlus, provide their zip code, and the TV provider (antenna, cable, satellite, etc). After that you’ll see an a program guide for your area when you launch GuidePlus. You can click on any entry to view it, while right clicking on any show in the EPG sets the MMC scheduler to record the show. GuidePlus offers a very flexible search routine, you can search by station(s), category (childrens, horror movie, game show,etc), date and time ranges, rating (1-4 stars), Parental Guidance rating, or key words. Guide Plus works well and is reliable, but a few of the advanced features offered by competitors are missing, such as a universal settting to start all recordings 3 minutes early, or record all episodes of a show.
ATI’s MMC includes a software DVD player. Though its not as feature rich PowerDVD, its a clear step above using Windows Media Player for watch videos, and the video quality is excellen. The Thru View feature makes it easy to watch a DVD while running other applications on a PC. If you stop a DVD and resume watching it a day or two later, the software remembers where to start, though it takes a few seconds to resume playing at the point where you last stopped. Like other softwar DVD players, this one supports screen captures, fast forward, rewind, and zoom. I've found the DVD player software to be a bit "flakey", sometimes when I change the size of the viewing window it goes black until I tap the space bar to pause and restart playback. But these problems are minor.
Remote Wonder
The included Remote Wonder is a very good combination pointing device and remote. The RF receiver is USB, about 1" wide, 2" long, and 3/4" thick with a short 2' long cable which plugs into one of your USB ports. The remote uses 4 AAA batteries (included), comfortable to hold in your hand, and a reasonable size, 8" long, 2 1/2" wide, and over an inch thick. Creative Labs says the range is 30 feet. The room my AIW 9800 Pro is installed in isn't big enough to confirm this, but I can confirm a range of at least 15 feet. A few other features offered by this remote include:
- The remote serves as a pointing device. With the 1" diameter "D" pad on the remote you can move the mouse cursor. Two buttons next to this pad will left click and right click on the cursor.
- There are 6 user defined buttons, for launching applications, hitting a short cut key, etc. The buttons can be universal for all applications, or defined specific to each application.
- All the standard controls that you'd see on a TV or VCR, FF, RW, mute, pause, etc, plus a few that you won't find, like "still capture", opening a media libray, and a button that calls up a context sensitive help menu that defines each button.
If you're going to connect your AIW 9800 Pro to a television, this remote will make watching content from your PC surprisingly easy.
Video 3D Gaming Performance
This AIW 9800 Pro is installed in a system with a 2.66 ghz Pentium 4 cpu, 4X AGP slot, 768mb of ram w/133mhz bus speed, running Win XP with service pack 2. Its not state of the art, but adequate to play any games available now. The 4X AGP slot provides only half the bandwith of 8X AGP slots, but all reviews and benchmarks I've seen indicate that 8X provides almost no advantage over 4X for this generation video card and today’s software. I’d expect a faster bus speed and faster, newer CPU would provide better performance for gaming, but this card seems to do well on my system. I don't have any recent games, but older games such as Knight of the Old Republic, several of the Need for Speed racing simulations, Elite Force 2, and the included Morrowind work well.
The AIW 9800 Pro core and memory run at “stock speeds”, ie 378 hz and 337.5 hz respectively. To try to quantify how well this card performs, I ran a couple of benchmarks, the latest versions of the Aquamark 3 and 3dMark03 (links at the bottom of this page). I chose these benchmarks after reading Ivplay’s very helpful Graphics Cards Buyer's Guide. Both programs were developed to benchmark 3d cards, are updated frequently, and are widely used by reviewers. (Since both benchmarks are widely used, graphics chip makers have been suspected of “cheating” by tailoring their cards and drivers specifically to perform well on these and other benchmark tests. Updates to the benchmark programs address most (perhaps all?)of these problems, but the potential for cheating should be kept in mind when comparing benchmarks.) A few conclusions I've drawn from these results and by comparing them to results reported by others are:
1. The AIW 9800 Pro’s 3D gaming performance appears to be identical to the performance of standard 9800 Pro cards without the TV capture and tuner features. There's no performance penalty for getting an AIW vs a standard card.
2. The card can be overclocked a bit (I used ATITool and RadClocker), though I do NOT routinely overclock this card. Given the somewhat undersized power supply and stock cooling in my Dell, I don’t feel the risk is justified. Overclocking the core speed and memory speed by 8% provided a 3% boost in framerates in the Aquamark 3 benchmark, a 5% boost in the Aquamark GFX score, and a 7% boost in the 3dMark03 score. At these clock speeds The ATITool utility reported a few artifacts (which I don't notice), indicating I won't be able to overclock much more.
3. The 9800 Pro’s benchmarks are about 15% better than the 9700 Pro, and are comparable to the GeForce 5900 based cards. Today’s “state of the art” video cards, the ATI X800 XT, and the GeForce 6800 Ultra get scores 60-65% higher than the AIW 9800 Pro.
My Benchmarks:
Aquamark3
Standard clock speeds
Overall 37230
CPU 6363
GFX 5262
Ave FPS: 37.23
Core overclocked from 378 to 411mhz, memory overclocked from 337 to 364mhz
Overall 37350
CPU 6363
GFX 5510
Ave FPS: 38.4
3dMark03
Standard Clock speeds
3DMark Score 5665 3DMarks
CPU Score 461.0 CPUMarks
Wings of Fury 174.4 fps
Battle of Proxycon 37.4 fps
Troll's Lair 33.1 fps
Mother Nature 37.4 fps
Core overclocked from 378 to 411mhz, memory overclocked from 337 to 364mhz
3DMark Score 6086 3DMarks
CPU Score 466.0 CPUMarks
Game Tests
Wings of Fury: 174.6 fps
Battle of Proxycon: 40.9 fps
Troll's Lair: 36.1 fps
Mother Nature: 41.4 fps
Support
ATI's support is a mixed bag. Most importantly, drivers are updated frequently, both in terms of new features and bug fixes, very much to ATI's credit. However, while drivers has improved over the last few years, they still are never "perfect" and require a significant effort to install. There is a lot of information available on their website, with free and pay per incident phone support, but no email support or user forums, as best I can tell.
ATI AIW 9800 Pro Page
http://www.atitech.com/products/radeon9800/aiw9800pro/index.html
Aquamark3
http://www.aquamark3.com/
3dMark03
http://www.futuremark.com/
ATITool
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/
RadClocker
Info and Download at http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=609
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 250
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