ATI ALL-IN-WONDER X800 XT

Thoughts

Before I sum things up, a little on why the X800 XT AIW was late. ATI initially planned to launch somewhere back in September or October of last year and I'm fairly sure early boards were demonstrated at press events to selected journalists. James Morris covered such an event for us here. Then ATI hit a couple of snags that mounted up to cause the multi-month delay.

Their major problem was creating the I/O connectors that hook up to the backplane. Have another look at it here and spot the tiny connector it's feeding into on the left, here. That's a whole bunch of separate signals to have working correctly without interference, fed into a connector small enough to make it into that backplane space left by larger DVI and VGA connections. You can appreciate the engineering needed to get that working correctly for all markets.

Following that, minor implementation issues with the Microtune tuner (unrelated to the tuner, just in getting it working right on the PCB) and the implementation of the entire product using AGP as the interconnect (a lot more fraught than using PCI Express!) pushed things back. However, that time spent perfecting things has caused them to deliver the product I certainly hoped they would.

Marrying the All-In-Wonder hardware with something as complex as the R420 reference design was never going to be easy but the end result is worth it. You get blistering 3D performance (almost as good as it's ever going to get on AGP) with the ability to tune TV, listen to the radio, timeshift and archive your favourite TV shows, capture video from your camcorder or games console and the ability feed audio back out to digital receivers, to name just a few of the cornerstone AIW features.

All that in a single-slot form factor has to be applauded. I have but two niggling issues with the product as delivered, namely the non-interactive video in through the breakout box and that it doesn't do RF passthrough on the I/O connector. Both are problems that can be solved either by ATI or yourself, if you use an RF splitter.

Otherwise, and I'll ignore my issues with MMC's interface, since I'm assured it's being worked on, it's a standout multimedia product. It's the definitive, best-of-breed combination 3D and video product for AGP systems, by quite some margin. That it's the last of the AGP All-In-Wonders matters not. What else could you possibly want, bar DVB-T and nicer software from ATI to control it? Those two points are fixable with a little more investment from you the user, and it's investment worth doing.

Theater 200 continues to hold station in its last stand in an AGP All-In-Wonder product, and as a last showing it does ATI proud. Quality should suit those users looking at an X800 XT AIW as a serious purchase and you can always add in a slim Theater 550 PRO if you wish for a bit more quality and the flexibility of MulTView.

ATI's Multimedia team took the time to get right a product that will appeal to many. Expensive in X800 XT guise (there are other X800 AIWs which I'll talk about in a separate article to come soon) but worth it if seriously fast 3D and excellent multimedia ability in a single slot is what you're after. MSRP is $499.

Seriously recommended for the well-heeled enthusiast that wants the integration of performance and multimedia features in one small space.