Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs

As the 1800 XT is finally hitting the market ATI will introduce its latest card in the All-In-Wonder series, the Radeon All-In-Wonder (AIW) X1800 XL.

In the past the All-In-Wonder additions to the ATI family usually didn't appear until months after the launch of the flagship products. However, ATI wanted to change things up this time around. By releasing the All-In-Wonder closer to the main product launch they are hoping that they can entice graphics and multimedia enthusiasts to purchase the combo board rather than running straight out to buy just the graphics AIB. For the price it would be hard to justify buying the 1800 XL for $449 when the All-In-Wonder offers you so much more for only $50 extra, $499 MSRP.

The Radeon All-In-Wonder X1800 XL is based on the X1800 XL GPU; the XL GPU enables 16 pixel pipes with engine and memory speed performance of 500 MHz and 500 MHz, respectively. This GPU is capable of processing 10 billion vertex shader instructions per second. ATI touts the All-In-Wonder as having the same graphics performance as the stand-alone 1800 XL.

ATI's new All-In-Wonder X1800 XL. (Source: ATI)

As usual, in addition to graphics hardware, the All-In-Wonder comes with a boatload of video and audio features and adds a few new tricks as well. The All-In-Wonder Microtune 2121 tuner provides instant viewing of up to 125 channels of cable or antenna broadcast (unfortunately, no HD this time around), it delivers FM radio capability to the PC, including FM-on-demand, which time-shifts radio content to allow for pausing or exporting to MP3 file formats. The Microtune 2121 is new to the All-In-Wonder and smaller than previous tuners. ATI claims that this new rev of the Micotune takes up 20% less surface space on the AIB, allowing it to be placed in more one-slot solutions, and it uses less power as well—11% less, to be exact.

Also new to the AIW 1800 XL is the Multimedia Center 9.10. Multimedia Center 9.10 offers a consistent user interface across applications to control viewing, capture, playback, display options, and viewing environment. Multi-media Center also has built-in personal video recorder (PVR) capabilities, which allow users to pause live TV, then rewind or fast forward and then resume playback. This ATI calls this feature TV-on-demand; what is special about the new Multimedia Center is it allows you to export shows, which are currently being stored in memory to either MPEG format or the ATI VCR format. After you record your shows, either with the TV-on-demand function or the One Touch Record button, you can transcode these recordings into MPEG-4 by using the Multimedia Center Library. The MPEG-4 setting compresses, making it easier to store files on your portable devices. Or you can record the show directly to MPEG-4 at the time of capture. Assuming you can code these files into a format the iPod could read, this would give us all a way around paying our $1.99 to ABC and Apple. Also you could save the files onto a memory stick and plug it into your PSP.

The Theatre 200 silicon is also on the X1800. The Theater 200 is responsible for receiving analog video signals and transforming them into digital ITU-656 compliant video. The chip also captures sound IF or composite audio, performs audio demodulation and stereo decoding and outputs the audio via the I2S or VIP interface.

The AIW 1800 XL is a PCI-E x16 graphics board and comes with:

• DVI connection

• VGA connection (via output adapter)

• TV antenna connector

• FM radio connector input

• Remote Wonder Plus

• AV I/O Hub connector

Also included are:

• Antenna/Cable connector input for FM

• Input connection block (S-video, composite, RCA stereo audio)

• Output connection block + HDTV connection S-video cable

• Composite video cable

And, finally, ATI made their famous dongles long enough this time around so you wont have to crawl under your desk if you want to switch from S-video to composite or anything else.

ATI's new video and display platform is as included with the All-In-Wonder. Avivo is an improved video display platform designed to enhance the entire video pipeline from capture to display, with the new process supporting HDTV and disk formats such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD, although, as previously mentioned, the Microtune tuner will not pick up terrestrial or cable HD.

The software bundle with the AIW X1800 is a bounty in itself. It is bundled with Adobe Premiere Elements and Adobe Photoshop Elements 4, as well as Microsoft Windows XP Multimedia Center Edition.

If consumers were saving their pennies waiting to buy the X1800 they might want to save a few more and invest in the All-In-Wonder X1800 XL.

The All-In-Wonder AIBs are a unique offering with no real competition in the market. No other card can give a multimedia enthusiast the graphics punch of a high-end GPU as well as all the video and audio features in one product. Add in the software bundle of Adobe Photoshop and Elements and ATI has produced an impressive product for the segment.