Preview: ATI's All In Wonder 9700 PRO

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Introduction

All In Wonder. These three words have become synonymous with multimedia on the PC, thanks to ATI. The Canadians introduced their video/graphics combo to the world in the form of a card that was simply called the "All In Wonder" (with no other bynames) and was based on the ATI Rage II+ 3D accelerator chip. With the integrated TV tuner, ATI merged the worlds of the TV and the PC. While videos and TV on the PC were by no means a revolutionary or even new idea, the concept of integrating both functions into a single card and including editing and viewing software in the package was indeed unique. Another advantage, compared to a separate 3D card + video add-in solution, is the price. Factor in the extra cost for the bundled video editing software, and the All In Wonder becomes a very attractive offer indeed. An additional boon is that a combo card doesn't suffer from the compatibility issues often present in two-card solutions.

Now the AIW family has a new member, the All In Wonder 9700 PRO based on the DirectX 9 GPU R300 with AGP 8x support. To make the name a little less cumbersome, ATI decided to drop the "Radeon." Unlike the previous model, the AIW Radeon 8500, ATI decided to revert to the classical tuner. The chip solution of the AIW R8500 was plagued by heat problems and also tended to be rather power hungry. Since an analog tuner also requires fewer pins, the board layout becomes much simpler as well.