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Summary

This is a basic preview of this product intended for readers who just want a quick look at the new product.  If you are interested in the full review, with all the technical data and benchmarks that you are used to seeing on PC Perspective, please click on this link to get to that article.

The ATI All-in-Wonder family has been in a category all its own for at least the last several years.  No one but ATI has taken on the task of creating a video card that is both a gamer's card, as well as a multimedia card with full input/output capabilities.  NVIDIA did once try a "Personal Cinema" series of cards with its partners, but it obviously didn't take off. 

The premise behind ATI's All-in-Wonder series is simple: take a high GPU, pair with their Theater logic chip, add some software and POOF; instant PC media.  But does the X1900 version of it stand the test of being both a gaming card and a multimedia card?

The ATI Radeon X1900 All-in-Wonder

As the name suggests, the X1900 AIW card is based on the new R580 architecture we saw with the release of the X1900 XTX and CrossFire cards last month.  It takes the same 48 pixel pipe based architecture and clocks it down to a more modest 500 MHz core clock and 480 MHz memory clock and comes installed with 256 MB of memoy instead of the XTX's 512 MB.  

Like all of ATI's All-in-Wonder line, this card comes with more than a few extras in the box that are responsible for all the input and output configurations you can throw at it.

These dongles support all the input and output of the All-in-Wonder card including one input block with S-Video, Composite and stereo audio inputs, one output block with S-Video, Composite and stereo output and one output block with component output. 

Despite a few issues that have been cropping up as of late, the ATI multimedia suite of applications is actually one of the more impressive features on the X1900 AIW that helps it to stand out from the NVIDIA cards I/O options.  It includes software to playback TV, run a DVR, listen to and record FM radio and play DVDs.  All of these features come in the box and are included with your purchase.  To accomplish the same tasks on an NVIDIA card (even if you could) you'd be paying extra for third party software.

Be sure to check out our full, detailed review for much more information on the video dongles and the included ATI software that comes with this card.

How does the card game?  Let's take a look at a couple of benchmarks:

Finally, we started using the new video quality benchmark, HQV.  Here are these results:

We go over each individual test in our full, detailed review of the X1900 AIW as well as describe what exactly they are testing. 

Final Thoughts

If you need to have the absolute fastest gameplay possible, you'll probably want to look towards the X1900 XTX card from ATI instead.  But if you want good gaming performance with good video performance and features, the X1900 All-in-Wonder is your best bet.  No other card offers fantastic gaming performance, robust video input and output capabilities and suberb video image quality in a single package and chances are no one will for some time to come.

This is a basic preview of this product intended for readers who just want a quick look at the new product.  If you are interested in the full review, with all the technical data and benchmarks that you are used to seeing on PC Perspective, please click on this link to get to that article.

Be sure to use our price checking engine to find the best prices on the ATI X1900 All-in-Wonder, and anything else you may want to buy!

Click here for the Detailed Review