ATI's Best: All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500 128MB & TV/Capture Card Roundup

Final Words

Although NVIDIA the undisputed king of the 3D gaming market, not even they can compete with ATI's extremely well packaged hardware/software combination that makes up the All-in-Wonder line.

The Personal Cinema is a very commendable first effort by NVIDIA, it's clearly superior to the first efforts by both ATI and Matrox but NVIDIA has obviously had a few examples to learn from. If NVIDIA can fix the issues we brought up in this comparison as well as dedicate some of their extremely talented hardware, software and R&D engineering efforts to producing their own software package to integrate perfectly with the Personal Cinema then they stand to be a formidable competitor to ATI.

We've seen countless examples of where NVIDIA has taken the talent of their employees as well as sought out new minds in order to one-up ATI at their own game; case in point being the recent release of nView. NVIDIA is an extremely capable company and their track record speaks for itself, but the Personal Cinema is an example of a situation where the NVIDIA brand can only take a product so far. NVIDIA needs a Guide+ license or at least the features their EPG currently lacks, they need a more useful remote control, they need a customized version of WinDVR made to work specifically with the hardware and the needs of NVIDIA users in particular - in the end, NVIDIA needs to do with the Personal Cinema, what ATI has done with the All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV. A GeForce4 Ti 4200 with an improved version of the Personal Cinema would be an incredible competitor but with the current Personal Cinema it would not be as compelling.

Now on to ATI; the All-in-Wonder family has matured considerably over the past few years. While the first All-in-Wonder cards incited a "cool" response from those that used them, today's All-in-Wonder line is getting to the point where it's truly impressive. Notice we didn't say perfect since there is quite a bit of improving in the software side that can be done, but ATI has the dedication, infrastructure and ability to improve above and beyond our limited suggestions. Given the amount of improvement we've seen in the current AIW software we would expect some significant gains for the next-generation AIW card.

In terms of what you should buy, our best overall pick for balanced performance/features card would be the All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV. Now priced at $299 it is relatively affordable compared to the $399 AIW Radeon 8500 128MB and although you sacrifice a bit in the way of gaming performance, you also save $100. If the money is no object then obviously the AIW Radeon 8500 128MB is the best you can do out of anything in this sector. For those that aren't as concerned with gaming performance if you can find user AIW Radeon or if not, the newer AIW Radeon 7500 will do just fine as they both use the new Multimedia Center software. If you do end up with an older AIW Radeon you can easily purchase the Remote Wonder to get all the features and benefits of the remote even if your card didn't come with it. Because of the lower price point and overall great bang for your buck, ATI is the first to win our Editor's Choice Gold Award for a TV/video capture graphics card with the All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV.

We've left Matrox out of these final words as their current solution is a bit behind the times. This is understandable considering its release well over a year ago and there's no doubt in our minds that another Marvel card has been long in the works over at Matrox. With a pretty accurate blueprint of what they're up against, we have nothing but the highest expectations for the next-generation Marvel card - Matrox, don't let us down.

In the end, the biggest competitor to all of these cards is the set top PVR like the Tivo or ReplayTV units. As personal video recorders, not even the AIW Radeon 8500DV can come close to matching the features and functionality of these two. Although Guide+ is a very impressive offering it lacks the configurability and conflict resolution capabilities of a Tivo and since these are dedicated machines they can always be time shifting without having to be told to do so. With ATI so far ahead of the game at this point we'd like to see them turn to the much more polished competitors in the set top world to gain ideas for future AIW cards on the PC. When your biggest competition is yourself it's very easy to grow complacent, we'd rather not see that from ATI so we'll point at a higher mountain for their engineers to climb. Impress us.

Where the PVRs lose out is that they are such dedicated machines that they cannot do much outside of record live TV. When it comes to offering multiple functions, these PC cards excel beyond belief. Being able to capture video from virtually any source is an important characteristic that should not be overlooked.

The term multimedia PC has changed a lot in the past several years, keep an eye on this market as it will dictate what the name means in the future.