All-in-wonder advice needed

[Tool Man]

I am thinking of replacing my humble All-in-Wonder Rage128Pro card with a more up-to-date version. Purely for better 3D graphics, as I am very happy with the capture performance of my old card.

Anyway, as ATI cards are all made by third partys now, in the UK anyway, I need some advide on what to go for.

The card I have been looking at is the SAPPHIRE Radeon 9700 Pro all-in-wonder (128Mb DDR). They call it "The Beast".....

I did read the reviews on this site, but none mention SAPPHIRE. So does anybody have any advice on this card, or a possible alternative?

Thanks,
Tool Man.

[DatMuthapucka]

Be more specific bout which model you are looking for.. but i do know one thing ... dont get a sapphire ....

[antonv]

ATI AIW 7500 or higher is the upgrade of the previous ATI AIW cards and it's made in Canada, so it is not made by third parties.

[Tool Man]

The card I have been looking at is the SAPPHIRE Radeon 9700 Pro all-in-wonder (128Mb DDR). They call it "The Beast"..

Like I said, this is the card I am looking at, but I havn't heard much about Sapphire.

"Built by ATI" cards seem to be no longer available in the UK, all Readeon cards here are "Powered by ATI", built by third parties like Sapphire, and Connect-3D. Both of which I believe make all-in-wonder cards.

http://www.sapphiretech.com/

Tool Man.

[mrtristan]

I've built two computers with lower end ATI powered Sapphire cards. Neither have given me any problems. I would guess that the build quality of their mid/high end cards must be better than the low end.

[Ziffelpig]

If you can, look at the AIW Radeon series, I have a low end P3-550, and could not play CC-Generals, I bought the 7500, it plays anything now flawlessly, including Generals and GTA3 Vice City. The capture card abilities and the Infra-Red remote are just great bonuses for me. By the way the Radeon allows me to capture to full DVD 720x480 at about 6000 cbr with minimal frame drop of 3 in a 2 hour period,and no frames dropped when I capture at 352x480 and the same bit rate.

[lordsmurf]

My research indicates the 7000-9700 and 128 PRO capture chips are almost all identical.

The graphics are different.

Only the 9800 has improved capture chips.

I'd say to shoot for a 9000, but I hear the "lowly" 7500 and 8500 card work great with games/graphics too.

I use my AGP 7200 for tons of photo work in addition to video capturing, and no complaints here. Handles Photoshop like a pro.

[LanEvo7]

The AIW 8500's gpu is faster than the AIW 9000's. Yea I know its 9000, but its a misnomer. Don't confuse the 8500 with the 8500 DV though. The DV has 64mb of memory and a slower gpu than the 8500. I'm not sure which is faster though, the 8500dv or the 9000.

If you plan to get it to play games, the 9000 won't do for up comming games. You'll probably want at least a AIW 9600 or the AIW 9700.

[Thorn]

Now that ATI has gone the way of nvidia and just selling the platform/chip, I'd suggest choosing your chip using reviews from tomshardware.com and anandtech.com (for example) and then choosing your brand from reviews of similar products from each brand (using above sites).

You're not going to find a review of every card/manufacturer/variation out there, so you take it on faith that if a company makes good cards that the unreviewed one will be on par. If a manufacturer typically makes cards slower than average with the same chips, you'll probably get poorer performance than from a board maker with a rep for satisfying gamers and overclockers. Of course, I upgraded from my AIW 128 to a GF4 and I doubt I would have noticed even a 10% difference. Stability and price may be bigger factors for you.