ATI All-in-Wonder X800 XT, (256 MB) AGP Video Card

I bought this card feeling sick from using up almost $400, but when it got here, I was amazed by what came in the package. The card packs a full blown ATI R420 GPU and a TV tuner (at less than the cost of most AGP Radeon X800 XTs, might I add) and better RAM compared to the original ATI X800 XT AGP board, which, according to Samsung's datasheets, should be safely overclockable to 1200MHz (I have not tried this yet!). ATI also gives you an enormously useful remote control and video in/out adapter blocks.

Installation went well... at first. ATI's CD includes older CATALYST drivers, so I quickly upgraded those. The Multimedia Center (MMC) upgrading didn't go over so well.
ATI includes MMC 9.03, so I upgraded to 9.08 after installation.

Upon upgrading, MMC started crashing at the splash screen every single time I started any feature - FM, TV, DVD, File player... I then got the CATALYST uninstaller, uninstalled every single piece of ATI software, rebooted, ran the CATALYST uninstaller again to remove the leftover drivers, and then did a clean install of the latest drivers and MMC version. So far, no problems. If you run into this problem, you will have to reinstall GUIDE+ from the CD.

Now I really began using the card. I loaded up ATI TV, and the picture came in crystal clear. VIDEOSOAP really makes everything clear when it deinterlaces and resamples the TV signal. However, I use a broadcast antenna when I'm watching TV (no cable in this room), and audio reception is nonexistent.

Using the included FM antenna, I can barely pick up the strongest signals. Even with a Belkin iPod FM transmitter on my desk, the card cannot pick up the signal well enough to hear the music.

When I am watching TV, even though the picture is crystal clear, the audio stream does not come through. Thinking that an amplified antenna would solve the problem, I went down the road to Wal-Mart and bought a 34dB amplified antenna.

No such luck.

The picture improved somewhat, but there is still not the slightest trace of discernible audio coming from the TV - It's all static. I can see what's being said through CC, but it's really annoying to not have audio. I will try a cable signal one of these days, but I'm guessing that the audio will not come in much clearer through cable.

All MMC functions aside, though, this is one sah-weet video card. I can play Doom3, Half-life 2, Halo, and Flight Simulator 2004 smoothly at their highest quality settings, turning on full screen antialiasing (FSAA) 6x and anisotropic filtering 16x.

Noise from this card is tolerable. At idle, I'd estimate the card adds under 20dB to the system noise. However, under load, the blower makes significantly more noise - perhaps as much as 30dB. Fortunately, I'm not always playing Halo or Doom3 or HL2, so unless you spend a lot of time with extremely graphics-intensive video games, I don't think that noise is a problem.

Thermally, the card added about 3 Celsius degrees (from 37 to 40 degC) to my system's idle temps (P4 Prescott 3.0E, Cooler Master Hyper-6 heatsink). I was upgrading from a passively cooled Radeon 9550 (underclocked 9600 core), so this small increase is quite acceptable for such a large jump in terms of GPU generations.

Benchmark numbers are the sweetest thing about this card. While they don't quite measure up to the X850XTPE or a pair of GeForce 6800 Ultras in SLI mode, they leave many milestones in the dust. I didn't run 3DMark01, because at this point with such advanced technology, the card's weaknesses are primarily going to be system-derived and not indicative of GPU strength.

3DMark03 left the 10,000 milestone in the dust - 11538 3DMarks (up from 3641 on my Radeon 5500).
3DMark05 passed the 5,000 mark, scoring 5403 (up from 1101).
AquaMark3 leaves the 50,000 mark halfway around the world, coming in at 60658.

I'm giving this three stars because the features the All-In-Wonder series is renowned for honestly suck in this release. I know people with AIW 9800 and AIW 9700 who do not have trouble getting broadcast signals. Of course, back then, ATI still used the Philips "Can" tuner, which took up practically a fourth of the PCB space. With the switch to the Microtune silicon tuner chip, it seems the reception quality has gone down significantly.

>>Update, 30 May 2005: I tried plugging in the cable TV, and I still ran into the problem of pure static for audio. I also tried plugging in an SNES and an NES and a VCR to the RF Coax input, and still, i get static for audio. I'm talking to ATI Support via email (their support number is Canadian, and I don't feel like paying the long distance bill for something which is probably their problem), but if tech support doesn't help, I will RMA this card for another one at the end of the week.

>>Update, 15 June 2005: I recieved the replacement unit today, and the TV is much better. Not only does the picture come in easier, but I have audio! The FM reception still is horrendous, though. It doesn't even tune to the right station sometimes. For example, when I tune to 94.5, 107.9 comes in. Incidentally, 94.5 is roughly 7/8 of 107.9. For all you electrical engineers out there, chew on that! I'm stumped. I'm using the included antenna, which is 1/4 wavelength.

I'm bumping this up to 4 stars, but that's still being generous, as the "high quality reception for FM radio broadcasts" promised by ATI didn't really come through, and the hassle to RMA it and be stuck with an underpowered video card for a week and a half was not really my idea of fun.

A final note, thanks to ChiefValue.com for making the RMA process hassle-free and even shipping out the replacement unit the same day that my defective unit arrived!