ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro Review
By Jeff Fila
December 2nd, 2003
Summary
There's no denying the power and usefulness of the ATI All-In-Wonder series of multimedia graphics cards. The All-In-Wonder 9600 pro is based on the powerful and popular 9600pro GPU and includes 128MB of RAM, and has a TV tuner and FM radio tuner built in. It allows you to record TV shows and FM radio, edit video, and play the latest games with the details cranked. With so many features and accessories, what's not to like? Read on and you may be surprised.
Full Review
Introduction
Just like it's Radeon 9600 Pro video card sibling, the 9600 All-In-Wonder Pro features 128MB of DDR memory and is fully DirectX 9 compatible.
The All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro features a few distinct differences from ATI's other All-In-Wonder offerings. This is the first All-In-Wonder to come with an FM radio tuner. It also features dual VGA outputs.
What's In The Box
The retail box includes an impressive array of accessories and software. Included in the package are:
Hardware:
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All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro graphics card
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ATI Remote Wonder radio frequency USB remote control (batteries are included)
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A/V Input block (with S-Video, analog video, and left and right audio)
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A/V Output dongle (with 2 VGA outputs, S-Video, composite video, S/PDIF coax digital audio, and a stereo audio mini-plug)
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6-foot S-Video cable
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6-foot composite video cable
Software:
Setup and Driver CD:
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ATI Catalyst Driver
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ATI Multimedia Center
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Gemstar GUIDE Plus+
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ATI HydraVision
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ATI Control Panel
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ATI DVD Decoder
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ATI Remote Wonder
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RealOne Player
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Muvee autoProducer
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Divx Player 2
Pinnacle Studio 8 CD (ATI enhanced version)
Other:
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Coupon for Remote Wonder II upgrade
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Coupon for free retail version of Half-Life 2
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Setup guide and user's guide
Curiously missing from the retail box is an FM antenna. If you want to use the FM tuner you must purchase an FM antenna with a coax connector separately. We were able to get one for $9.99 at a local Radio Shack that performed somewhat adequately (more on that later).
Also missing is a DVI output. If you have a digital monitor, you must purchase a converter to hook up to one of the two VGA connectors.
ATI had originally intended to include the Remote Wonder II in the retail box; however, it was not ready for prime time when the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro began shipping. Instead, they include the older version of the Remote Wonder and a coupon for a “free” upgrade to the Remote Wonder II. The consumer just has to pay for shipping. We think that was a noble thing for ATI to do.
ATI scores a big bonus with gamers by adding a coupon for a free copy of Half-Life 2. The game, one of the most anticipated in gaming history, won't be out until at least April of 2004, but at a projected retail of $49.99, that's a nice addition.
Hey, Nice Dongles
As you can see from the picture below, the board gets quite cramped with the addition of the FM tuner. To make room for all of these inputs and outputs, ATI moved the outputs off-board to a dongle. How they can turn an output with 28 pins into six connectors that can be used simultaneously we have no idea, but we're impressed. The two VGA connectors alone have 13 pins each.
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The ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro features an off-board dongle to handle outputs and inputs
The All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro is chock-full of input and output connections. The output dongle includes two VGA connections, an S-Video output and a composite video output. This should allow you to connect to any monitor or TV, besides the aforementioned DVI monitor. It also incorporates an S/PDIF digital coax audio output, for Dolby 5.1 Surround sound, as well as a standard mini-plug stereo audio output.
On the input side, the purple input block allows you to connect a VCR or non-digital camera to your computer to import video. It includes connections for S-Video, composite video and left and right audio. ATI chose not to include a connection for IEEE-1394 (Firewire), which has been included on other All-In-Wonder products, but we don't see this as a problem. Most computers and motherboards come with several front and rear Firewire ports these days. The purple color wasn't the best choice in our opinion, however. If you are going to use the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro in a home-theater setting, it may look out of place with your black and sliver components.
What's Under The Hood
The graphics processor is the same RV350 core that powers the regular Radeon 9600 Pro reference design. The major difference between the RV350 and the R350 core cards (like the Radeon 9800) is the number of pixel pipelines. The R350 features an 8-pixel pipeline but the RV350 has only a 4-pixel pipeline. According to ATI, since the RV350 is based on the 0.13-micron manufacturing process versus the R350's 0.15-micron process, it runs cooler and allows for a higher core clock speed. The All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro core is clocked at 400MHz. Basically, this allows ATI to produce a cheaper graphics engine that can often perform close to its more expensive Radeon 9500, which had been the reigning mid-range graphics card.
The ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (left) and ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro (right)
The All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro features 128MB of Samsung 2.8ns DDR memory clocked at 325MHz, compared to the 300MHz of the 9600 Pro reference design. This allows the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro 800MB/s of extra memory bandwidth over the Radeon 9600 Pro.
As we suspected, the added 25MHz of memory bandwidth helps the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro score better than the Radeon 9600 Pro on all of the graphics benchmarks that we ran. There were slight increases in most of our benchmarking scores.
TV and radio tuning is done by a Phillips stereo TV and FM tuner. An ATI Theater 200 analog video decoder and stereo audio processor handles video capture.
The board has only one heatsink and fan, which is the same one that ATI has been using since the Radeon 8500s came out a few years ago. There are no heatsinks on the RAM; only on the GPU. With the addition of the TV and FM tuning and video editing, the board is laid out quite differently than the regular Radeon 9600 Pro. As far as we can tell, only the RAM and GPU are in the same locations.
Installation and Setup
Although the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro is still a single-slot AGP card, installation can be tricky depending on the type of case you have. We had no problems at all installing it in a full-tower case. However, installation in a Biostar iDeq 200v small-form-factor case was not as easy. We were able to get it in, but it took a lot of effort to make sure we didn't break anything. The coax connectors get in the way on an SFF design and we had to actually flex the corner of the board at one point. We were concerned that the strange angle we were using to slide the card in would damage the connectors or AGP slot, but luckily it didn't.
If you are planning on making a Home Theater PC (HTPC) with the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro, be aware that you are going to have to exert some extra force on the board and possibly have to modify something on a SFF case.
The included driver CD runs installation of all of the software at once. This is a nice feature, but if you are one who likes to make sure you have the latest version of all software before you install the hardware, this can get tedious. The setup routine automatically installs the following:
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ATI HydraVision
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Gemstar GUIDE Plus+
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Catalyst Driver
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ATI Multimedia Center
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ATI Control Panel
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ATI DVD Decoder
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ATI Remote Wonder
It can take quite a while to install all of this software, but the automated routine went through without a hitch. Once the install is complete and you have restarted your system, the ATI tray icon provides you with a link to all of the software. The “Launch Pad” automatically loads a toolbar on the right hand side of your screen by default. This allows you to access all of the features of the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro with one click. Disabling the toolbar is as easy as clicking the close button.
Another nice feature of the ATI software is the "UninstallAll" program. This program is an uninstall routine that will completely remove all of the ATI software on your system. This is great for driver upgrades or for when you are swapping out video cards.
When you first use your TV tuner, you have to set up the channels. The software automatically scans your channels for you much like a TV or VCR setup would. When you initiate the GUIDE Plus+ software, it will name the channels for you based on your Zip or Postal Code. You have the option of renaming the channels if you wish.
TV On Your Desktop
Using the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro is pretty straightforward and easy. Opening up the TV tuner or DVD player can be done with a click of the Remote Wonder or with a click of the mouse.
The Remote Wonder operates on radio frequency so line-of-sight is not required, as it is with an infrared remote control. This is both a good and a bad thing. On the positive side, you can control your computer and All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro through walls and around corners. On the negative side, since all of your other remotes are likely to be IR, the Remote Wonder is not compatible as a learning remote. If you plan on using the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro in a home theater environment, be aware that you will have yet another remote control to deal with.
ATI's Remote Wonder is a USB radio frequency remote control for your computer.
The remote does most functions you would expect from a TV remote control plus more. There is a navigation touch pad in the middle that allows you to move a mouse cursor around. This enables you to browse the web or use Windows applications with your remote. The default speed of the cursor is quite slow and most users may want to increase that. Unfortunately, the buttons are a bit finicky. Some times they just did not respond. At first, we thought that the volume and channel changing buttons do not function like most other remotes. To increase the volume, we had to repeatedly hit the button to get to the desired level, as opposed to being able to just hold the button down like on other remotes. The same went for changing of TV channels. If you want to go up or down several channels, you must repeatedly hit the button. This, however, seemed to fix itself because at the end of our testing, we were able to do this with no problem.
One other annoyance is that when you change channels, the sound comes in, drops out, and then comes back on each channel you change. This was constant and just to be sure, we tested this on two different sound cards and it happened on both.
EazyLook is ATI's home theater “front end.” It enables everything controlled by the ATI Remote Wonder to be easily seen at a distance or on a television. It's a clean interface and easy to use. Several buttons on the Remote Wonder are pre-programmed to access features of the ATI Multimedia Center and EazyLook. Several other buttons can be programmed to perform other functions. One annoyance we found however, was the default setting that makes EazyLook come up at the press of any button on the remote. This means that by default, if you are watching TV in a window and wish to change the channel, EazyLook will maximize your TV window at the press of any button, and then attempt to change the channel. Unfortunately, the first button press is not registered so if you typed “15” it would first maximize and then go to channel “5” instead. This “feature” can be turned off in the settings, but it is quite annoying to be set as a default.
We experienced a few lockups of our test system while watching TV. This occurred when we were watching TV in a window and tried to change the channel or shut it down. Sometimes the TV would go full-screen with no audio. Our entire computer locked up and no matter what we tried we had to do a hard shutdown by holding down the power button on the case. Pressing esc or ctrl-alt-del didn't even work. This didn't happen all of the time, but enough for us to think of it an issue, especially since we lost several paragraphs of this very review.
The TV tuner can handle up to 125 channels of analog cable. This is fine, and more than adequate if you have basic cable. However, if you have digital or satellite cable, the usefulness of the product greatly diminishes. You can't tune in the extra digital TV channels beyond your cable company's basic offerings.
As a comparison, Time-Warner Cable in Albany, NY, where the unit was tested offers 76 analog channels. The digital cable service and HBO package offers 181 channels plus over 20 digital music stations. Some of these channels are duplicates, but in essence, this means that there are more than 105 channels that the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro cannot tune in. It also cannot tune in HTDV broadcasts.
Now, we know enough to not expect this out of the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro, but consumers need to be aware that they won't be able to watch their HDTV or digital cable shows on this card. If you are planning on making an HTPC and making this the center of your home theater, keep this in mind.
There are some innovative features on the TV side of the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro. One such feature is “Video Desktop.” This makes your TV the desktop background. Another feature called “ThruView” allows you to set the TV as your desktop or a translucent window in the background that can be seen through active applications. This enables you to view TV and work on applications at the same time. This is a must if you want to do both because, unfortunately, the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro does not support TV viewing on a second monitor. The two VGA outputs allow for dual-monitor computing, but you are unable to view TV on your second monitor — which would be the ideal location for TV if you are watching and trying to get some work done.
The All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro also includes Gemstar's GUIDE Plus+ TV listings software. The software downloads a week's worth of program listings and descriptions at a time. You can view your TV listings and plan your viewing schedule while still watching the TV in the top left corner of your screen.
Working in conjunction with GUIDE Plus+ are the “personal video recorder” and TV on Demand features. Personal Video Recorder allows you to use your PC like a VCR or TiVo. You can program it to record shows, select the quality of the recordings and save them to your hard drive. You are also supposed to be able to save to a CD or DVD on the fly, although we did not try this feature.
Programming to record is as easy as right clicking on a show and selecting “record.” You can record the current program you are watching with the VCR-like buttons on the Remote Wonder. The unit also features the ability to pause and rewind live TV. You can sort by programming type (sports, movies, news, etc) and even search by actor name or keywords. You can also take still screenshots of the TV broadcast with the push of a button. Screenshots are saved as .BMP images.
While GUIDE Plus+ can be useful, it also has a few quirks and bugs that can't be overlooked. The worst of these is watching TV while looking through your TV guide. The guide places a TV window in the top left corner of your screen to view the channel as you look at programming information. The TV changes channels when you click on another channel. Clicking on a program allows you to view a detailed description of the program. That is fine, but if you click on another time slot, the view in the TV window changes to that channel at that time slot. You'll want to click on other time slots in order to program to record a show in the future. Since you can't watch TV in the future, the TV window says “Not Currently Showing.” It would make much more sense if the program just continued to view the program that is currently on the channel. There is also no way of scrolling through the list of channels with the remote without repeatedly clicking it. A scroll-mouse feature would be a welcome addition.
GUIDE Plus+ could also benefit from a better schedule update. TV programming is downloaded from the Internet once a week. It's nice to have a week's worth of programming downloaded at a time, but you have to manually elect to download the programming info every week. Since you are going to be doing this every week, it would make sense for the program to be able to just do it automatically in the background.
DVD Viewing
Most video cards today can handle DVDs without much problems and that's the same with the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro. ATI has been known for their high-quality 2-d video as well as their 3-d graphics and this card is no different.
We tested with the old favorite test movie, The Matrix, and the card handled the high action “lobby scene” with no problems whatsoever. Skipping through chapters, pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding were a breeze with the Remote Wonder.
Unfortunately DVD viewing was not perfect all of the time. Two times in a row our test computer locked up when we were viewing the title page of The Matrix in a window and we tried to move or resize the window. It happened a few other times, but not consistently.
FM Radio On Your Desktop
As we mentioned earlier, the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro features an FM tuner. It is integrated into the TV tuner and there is a coax connector on the video card that can hook up to an antenna. The antenna is required, but not included with the product so you'll have to purchase one if you want to listen to the radio on your PC.
We purchased an indoor FM radio antenna from Radio Shack for $9.99. We're not sure if it was the antenna or the tuner, but it was tough getting all of our stations. It wasn't that the antenna wasn't powerful enough — it almost seemed like it was too powerful. We had a tough time getting all of the channels that we normally got in our vehicles or homes. Channels that are in close proximity in frequency to each other often “bled” into the next channel. Because of this, we weren't able to get good reception on many channels that were easily tuned with even a handheld mp3 player with a built in FM tuner.
As a result, scanning for FM channels was useless since a “station” was picked up at almost every frequency. Volume was also an issue and no matter what settings we tried, it was always lower than the desktop volume.
As with TV, the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro allows you to “time shift” FM radio. You can pause live radio and resume where you left off. You can also schedule it to record specific stations when you want. We really looked forward to this feature but we just weren't able to do it with the antenna we had.
The FM tuner uses the same on-screen interface as the TV tuner does. We thought the tuner skin that ATI provides as a default was hard to read and looked a bit amateurish.
The default tuner skin for all multimedia applications.
Another bad selection for “default” is that the FM audio is set to “mono” mode. You have to go into the settings to select “stereo” mode to listen to your radio stations in stereo. Are there even any FM radio stations that broadcast in mono anymore? Don't answer, that was a rhetorical question.
The FM tuner has 10 presets that you can name whatever you want. Tuning was again a chore. It appears that the Remote Wonder buttons are quite finicky, because at times we were able to hold down a button to scan, when other times, we had to repeatedly push the button to change channels. If this happens and you want to go from one end of the spectrum to the other, be prepared to do a lot of clicking. Unfortunately, the number buttons on the remote do not work to switch channels, which would have made a lot of sense. One other annoying aspect of the FM tuner is that the application must be the active window in order for you to adjust the volume or change the channel. If you are working with the radio on in the background, you must switch to the FM tuner application in order to make these adjustments.
Video Editing
It was nice to be able to dust off some old VHS tapes and import and edit them on our computer. Importing at the highest quality was very simple and we were able to make a DVD out of the tape that looked and functioned much better than the VHS. The included Pinnacle Studio 8 created menus and titles and allowed us to effortlessly burn to DVD.
Like in the FM radio and TV, sound volume on recorded video was lower than the original output. We had to crank up our sound levels to get an adequate level.
You can really see the difference in video quality between VHS and digital when you import a VHS tape to a computer. We had to keep it at the highest quality because of the already low-quality aspects of VHS video. The capture software allows you to select the quality of the video you capture from analog, digital or broadcast sources by using a preset selection or creating your own. Keep in mind that importing and editing video takes up a lot of hard drive space and you'll need a fast hard drive.
On To The Gaming
At the core of the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro is the RV350 graphics engine - ATI's extremely popular mainstream gaming processor. Gaming with the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro is even a slight bit better than with the Radeon 9600 Pro because of the increased memory bandwidth.
We were able to run all games we tried at or near the highest visual settings with full-screen antialiasing off with no problems. The RV350 is still not powerful enough to have all of the eye-candy turned on as well as FSAA, but that's what the high-end cards are for.
Call of Duty, Splinter Cell and Medal of Honor: Spearhead all looked and performed great. Spearhead stock maps were constantly over 120 frames per second on our test rig. Some Call of Duty players have complained about the Radeon 9600 not working with the game — a problem that ATI has since fixed with a driver patch — but we experienced no problems with the Catalyst 3.8 or 3.9 drivers.
Conclusion
The All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro is a very powerful mainstream graphics card and multimedia workhorse. It is the perfect video card at the perfect price range for someone with basic cable who wants to be able to watch TV and listen to the radio on his or her computer and play the latest games. It is also great at importing analog video and helping you convert it to CD or DVD. It would be an editors choice score if we rated the card only on it's gaming and video performance and included extras, but we aren't going to do that.
We can't get over the poor performance of the Remote Wonder and the buggy-ness of some of the software. ATI also does not come out and tell consumers that the product will not tune their digital TV stations. It may be assumed to be a given by some, but many consumers aren't going to think of this. ATI touts the package as such a value because of all the added software and the Remote Wonder, which costs $49 by itself. Unfortunately, there are headaches and glitches that come with these add-ons. When reviewing this product, we couldn't help but think about the average consumer with the average computer troubleshooting skills having a hard time with the glitches we observed.
We'll update our review when the ATI Remote Wonder II is available. Hopefully ATI will have worked out the bugs with the first version. We're also working on an HTPC that incorporates the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro and uses third-party software for TV listings, PVR and DVD viewing. We'll let you know if that makes a difference in the performance of this card.
Performance
Benchmarking:
Because the ATI All-In-Wonder Pro is marketed more towards a mainstream crowd, we benchmarked the card on a more mainstream system.
Our test system consisted of:
- Motherboard: Abit AT7-Max2
- Processor: AMD Athlon 2800+ Barton
- Memory: 512MB Mushkin PC2700 DDR (2x256)
- Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA (7200 rpm, 8MB cache)
- Power Supply: Enermax EG-465P 450W
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (service pack 1)
- Drivers: ATI Catalyst 3.9 (11/5/2003)
As you can see below, the ATI All-In-Wonder Pro benefits from the added memory bandwidth. In all of our tests, it came out just a bit better than the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro.
Specs
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