Digital Trends

ATI All-In-Wonder X1900

February 6th, 2006 | by Ian Bell

Conclusion

We have said this a hundred times and we are going to say it again. Buy the AIW X1900 for its gaming and video capturing and editing capabilities. If you are planning on buying it for a home theater or Media Center PC, pass it up. Buy a smaller graphics card and then an ATI Theater 550 Pro based tuner card and good HDTV tuner card; you will be much better off.

The AIW X1900 only really only improves upon older AIW cards with the newer graphics chip and that's about it. It still uses the older Theater 200 tuner chip, the electronics program guide and the ATI Multimedia Center software looks the same and is not really a good software suite for a full-fledged Media Center PC. And measuring in at 10-inches, this card will be incredibly hard to get into most custom-made PC's let alone a store bought one.

That being said, the AIW X1900 presents a good value to those looking to upgrade their older video card for one that does a little bit of everything. The Remote Wonder is a great remote control and the software package is fantastic. In the end, the AIW X1900 needs some more polish and a real identity.

The AIW X1900 really belongs at home in a desktop geared for multimedia buffs or for someone living in a dorm room or similar environment where space is important.

Pros

• Powerful GPU, great for gaming
• Excellent software package
• Presents a good overall value

Cons

• Way to large, hard to fit into a desktop PC
• Older video decoder chip
• No HDTV tuner
• Only encodes video in MPEG2, not MPEG4
• GPU clock speed is lower than X1900 XT counter-part