ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon - Great Captures

[Panther]

I have a ATI All-in-Wonder 128, my system is a Celeron 800, with 256meg of Ram and ATA66HDs. Now on my system, I can capture to VCD format with the Motion Estimate set to 70 %. This produces Good results, but I have always wondered what would be needed to get TOP results.

Well, I just delivered a new system to a customer. And I put it through it's paces while I was setting it up.

The system is as follows:

ABIT KR7A-Raid Motherboard. One of the first MBs to support ATA133.
AMD Althon 1.6ghz XP1900
256 MB or 266mhz DDR Ram.
ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 32mb DDR
60 GB Maxtor ATA 133 HD
LG 16x10x40 CDRW
Pioneer 16x DVD (supports ATA66, most others only support ATA33)
Soundblaster Audigy MP3 Soundcard

Those are the important parts of the new system. Under this configuration, I was able to capture to VCD with the Motion Estimate set to 100% with no frame loss, even with other apps like Web Browsing going. However apps that have higher processor loads did affect frame loss, so you would still have to keep other running apps to a light load. But for the first time, I was able to see a ATI AIW capture to VCD at 100%. Now in my area, I have 2 stations that show the new series Startrek Enterprise. I had already captured Episode 12 on my Home system at 70%, then I captured it on the customer system at 100%. All I can say is WOW. The difference visually is amazing.

Also, the New system had other benifits. IE Reprocessing 60 Minutes of DivX to VCD using TMPGenc, on my Celeron 800, takes about 2 hours. On the Althon 1.6ghz, the same file converted with identical settings in under 25 Minutes.

Now, nominally, the difference is only twice the speed. But a celeron has a smaller L2 Cache, and the system is only PC100. While the Althon has a larger L2 Cache, but the biggest difference is that the Althon is using 266mhz DDR Ram, as is the Video Card a DDR version. The result is over 3 times the performance. The other big difference is that the new system has an ATA133 HD, while my home system has only ATA66 HDs. This results in a lot lower CPU load from the HD, as data can be written twice as fast.

I recommend anyone looking at upgrading, look for the following features, DDR Ram, and ATA133. Now currently the selection of ATA133 capable Motherboards is narrow, but with time will improve. Also, the ATI AIW 32MB DDR is a great card, and there is also the ATI AIW 8500DV, if you need DV support. And last the fastest CPU you can afford. AMD CPUs of similar proformance to INTEL, are less expensive and a much better value.

The whole system for the customer, before Monitor was $1700CAD, or about $1050US. The customer opted for a NEC LCD1530 Monitor, but Choice of Monitor is not a factor in the speed.

HQ Captures are finally becoming affordable.

[Bstansbury]

Sounds like it is a very powerful system. Could you expand in more detail,... which is very important to all of us,... what did you use for capture,.. what were the settings, frames rate, video format,... etc.