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Review: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro All-In-Wonder

by Ryszard Sommefeldt on 1 August 2003, 00:00 5.0

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qas2

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The Hardware


We've gone over in detail what makes a recent All-In-Wonder package. So here's the hardware needed to do it. First off, the board itself. Forgive the ATI supplied image, it's better than what I managed to take with my digicam.



As you can see, it's basically any ATI or partner 9800 Pro PCB with the Rage Theater 200 chip (invisible in the picture), the Philips TV tuner in the top left, and the custom AGP backplane for hooking up your display and input hardware.

As you'll see in the next picture, a UK board ships with a different input into the TV tuner, for a UK antenna hookup. Click it for a different picture with my TV antenna hooked up.



Note, that since the All-In-Wonder uses a quite different set of input and output connections, compared to a 'regular' graphics card, the DVI port is the only way to hookup a monitor (unless your monitor accepts an S-Video input). For me, that means using the supplied DVI-to-VGA convertor for hooking up my Sony CRT. If you don't possess a monitor with DVI input, you'll have to do the same. Also note that the traditional second head output on the All-In-Wonder is limited to a TV output source, and not a second monitor. That's down to design, there's no way to cram another VGA output onto the backplane. Also, hooking up two monitors along with TV inputs and outputs is outside the means of the hardware anyway.

The port next to the DVI output is the TV output. You get S-Video out, composite video out, RCA (digital) and 3.5mm audio jacks all on the same cable. You hookup the video output to your input source, usually a television for watching DVD's on the TV, or recorded PVR shows. The it's a matter of choosing the audio output to hookup. If you have digital hardware, use the RCA output (no supplied cable) to hookup the S/PDIF output to your audio decoder for a full AC-3 stream (where applicable, when watching DVD's or Dolby recorded PVR stuff), otherwise you use the 3.5mm jack for a stereo feed to your speakers. In my case, that 3.5mm output was fed back into the line input of the ASUS A7N8X motherboard, so I could use my PC speakers. TV tuner audio output is fed to the system via this hookup, so even if you aren't using TV out as such, you still want to use the cable to get at your audio streams.

If you have a HDTV or component television with support for Y:Pr:Pb output, you use the funky red coloured cable from the same port, that gives you access to those signals. Again, it also carries audio, both 3.5mm regular stereo and an RCA hookup for the digital goodness, and you'll need to use it to hear audio from the Theatre chip. I couldn't test that bit of kit, since my TV isn't cool enough to accept component input. Guaranteed if your TV is a little more high end, you'll be using the red cable. Here's a shot of it so you know what you are looking for.



The next port along is the TV antenna input. Nothing exciting there, use that to get TV signals onto your system via the Philips tuner and RT200 ASIC.

The fourth and final port is for AV input. This is for your regular VIVO stuff, capturing analogue video data video the supplied copy of Pinnacle Studio 8 SE (not supplied with the test kit and sadly I couldn't look at it). A purple breakout box connects to this port and gives you four more hookups. Two for video, both S-Video and composite video signals, and two for audio, using regular phono sockets. More than likely any video source you'll be capturing from will use those connections, so you are good to go. No supplied phono audio cables however (in the review kit at least), but you'll have cables already if you have the hardware to capture from (usually a camcorder, DVD player or VCR). Here's a shot of the breakout box.



That's it as far as the card itself goes. Other cables supplied with the review kit were a standard S-Video cable and a standard composite video cable with phono style end points. I've used up my word count and page length for the card itself, a new page for RemoteWonder.