zozzlhandler :
Thanks for the great review! How about adding the ATI 650 (PCIE version)
card to the review?
I have been a loyal ATI customer for (5) standard graphic's cards.
Another (5) - 9600XT, 9800Pro, X800XT, X800XL, X800GT (pal) All-In-Wonder Cards, and (3) PCI TV Tuner cards including (1) which is the original HDTV tuner w/antenna.
ATI or AMD I should say, has abandoned those of us who run the All-In-Wonder Cards. They put out (4) of the buggiest drivers (ATI) & Media center programs that I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with (MMC/WDM 9.13, 9.14, 9.15, 9.16). And they have simply washed their hands of US. Leaving users with few choices each of which has it's own downfall.
First choice you can run the original drivers that shipped with the card or a very limited window of analog drivers. But this locks you into never being able to upgrade to the newest Catalyst display drivers; you have whatever bugs existed back then and are penalized by the old display drivers but at least the TV tuner / capture functionality works and is under your control. The display drivers have and continue to work excellently.
Choose to have your card run with the best available display drivers (Catalyst 7.10) (which in my case with the x800XT A-I-W increased my 3dmark06 scores by almost 400 points) and you are forced to use on of the above listed digital WDM/MMC drivers. The digital drivers (WDM) run a unified T200 driver...unlike the analog drivers which were separated and oddly enough made the cards preform better and faster. Impossible to mix and match new Catalyst drivers with old WDM or MMC/WDM drivers. If you do, TV tuner functions don't work/start ever! Upgrade to the one of the newer WDM or MMC/WDM drivers listed above and the TV runs :lol: with what ATI terms as a "Feature" TV recording constantly to the hard drive (remember that these are all software Mpeg so this constantly taxes your CPU and fills up your HD space forcing you to have to delete files a lot other wise your HD's fill up with useless video....this used to be a user controlled function called TV-on-Demand (to offer PVR/DVR functions like a Tivo) that the user could turn on and off. ((In fact ATI now posts the reg edit on its own board to stifle complaints))
Some awesome ATI A-I-W users found some registry hacks (2) - that work to some degree to disable this so called "feature". It was a feature when we could choose to turn it on & off at our discretion. Problem is it has a way of re-enabling itself.
The tv guide features which were like programmable timer recording/viewing setup don't work correctly and often crash. I can't set up any kind of future timing record (the function exists but if you try and set it, causes several errors until you fight your way back there and delete it. The functionality of the software in the rest of the MMC suite is unreliable. Crashes, crashes, and more crashes. Its not unheard of to have a partially functioning system at the start of the day only to have it become completely unstable and need uninstalling and a re-installation before the day is through.
ATI's responses have been to blame it's most devoted users. Stating
WE must have made installation errors despite following their recommendations to the letter. I myself have, to satisfy the ATI techs done more system formats and clean installations than I can remember. The errors appear no matter whether this is a clean installation of the drivers on a clean installation of Windows XP home or XP professional, or done removing & reinstalling the drivers.
ATI's last quoted response to me was to install "...My recommendation for your AIW card is to install the Catalyst 6.2 and the ATI Multimedia Center 9.06.1"
This is an improvement from the previous replies which told me I was to blame. This message concludes with a list of third party software packages that I could purchase and try.
I type this out because I will never waste another dollar on ATI. There is nothing to prevent them from deciding tomorrow that the new line of TV tuner cards that produced will no longer be supported by drivers and be relegated as discontinued.
The TV tuner cards (PCI or PCI-E tend to be much easier to work with as they do not require the same drivers to function.
AMD / ATI have dropped the ball on this one and despite the 650 chip probably being better than the competitors for actual quality....I will NEVER EVER BUY ANOTHER ATI product again. (Unless they resolve the MMC/WDM problems).