Product Reviews

ATI's All-in-Wonder graphics cards used to be among our favourites, but there's been little emphasis on new cards for quite some time. However, that's all going to change as ATI has grabbed back the reins and is selling the All-in-Wonder range direct. This month we review three new products: the 2006 Edition, the X1800XL and the top-of-the-range X1900.

All three products use the PCI-E x16 interface and come with a hybrid digital and analogue TV tuner, FM radio and video capture. While the cards will work with third-party applications such as Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition and CyberLink's PowerCinema, ATI provides its own Multimedia Center software. As bundled software goes, it's not too shabby and gives you all the functions you'd expect, including the ability to pause live TV and schedule recordings. However, the only EPG you can use with the software is TVTV (which costs £15 a year), as Multimedia Center does not pick up the free EPG information that's broadcast with Freeview. This is a real shame. We'd suggest buying PowerCinema as this works brilliantly with Freeview.

Each card also comes with analogue inputs and outputs for video capture and TV-out. As with previous versions of the product, there's quite a mess of cables. Extending the half-hearted break-out box would make it neater.

All the cards come with ATI's AVIVO technology, which helps accelerate high-definition (HD) video including the new H.263 codec. The cards also have HDCP-compliant DVI ports, so you can play protected content on HD TVs.

The 2006 Edition is at the bottom of the range and uses a Radeon X1300 graphics chip clocked at 450MHz. It comes with 256MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 400MHz (800MHz effective). With just four pixel pipelines it's not the fastest graphics performer. As you can see from our benchmarks, it couldn't manage a playable frame rate in any of our games tests. However, turning Doom 3 down to a

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resolution of 1,024x768 with no anti-aliasing improved the frame rate to 32.5fps. This means it's an acceptable card if you don't mind playing the occasional game at low detail settings.

The 2006 Edition also loses out to its big brothers on other fronts. First, there's no remote in the box, so you can't use the multimedia software from the comfort of your armchair. Second, it comes with only Premier Elements 2.0, while the others also include Photoshop Elements 4.0. Finally, there's no component output included in the box, although you can buy the necessary cable separately if you want.

The X1800XL and X1900 look very similar, and both come with remote controls, the full break-out box including component video, and Photoshop Elements 4.0 and Premier Elements 2.0, which is a very generous bundle. The main difference is the graphics performance.

The All-in-Wonder X1800XL has 16 pixel pipelines, a 500MHz core and 256MB of GDDR3 memory running at 500MHz (1GHz effective), which is exactly the same specification as the standard X1800XL. Performance was very good across all our tests, although Call of Duty 2, which is very demanding, ran at a smoother 27.7fps with anti-aliasing turned off. Even so, it shows this card can cope with the current range of titles at high resolutions and detail settings.

The X1900 is a slower version of the X1900XT (reviewed on page 42). It has a 500MHz core speed and 256MB of GDDR3 running at 480MHz (960MHz effective). However, it has 48 pixel pipelines, which helps it achieve excellent scores in our benchmarks. While it struggles a little at a resolution of 1,600x1,200 with high detail settings, it still provides amazing performance that's more than good enough for gamers.

As with previous All-in-Wonder graphics cards, the new range is best suited to mini PCs that lack the room to house a dedicated graphics card and a separate TV tuner. Of the three models on test, the X1900 is the better buy. The 2006 Edition is too underpowered for games players and doesn't come with a remote control or Photoshop Elements. The X1800XL, while able to compete with high-end graphics cards and bundled with a remote control and Photoshop Elements, is expensive for what you get.

The X1900, however, has high-end performance, a remote control and Photoshop Elements, and it's only slightly more expensive than the X1800XL version. For all three cards, though, we recommend that you upgrade from the supplied software to Windows MCE or PowerCinema to get Freeview's EPG.