ATI's All-In-Wonder X1900 Performance And DVD Decoding Quality
by Josh Venning on February 10, 2006 8:45 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Introduction
ATI is no-doubt enjoying the limelight lately with the release of the X1900, which is no surprise considering their new card puts ATI back in the lead over NVIDIA in the performance category. With some form of the 7800 GTX so long on the top of that list, it's kind of strange seeing an ATI card take its place, especially given the timing of the release and the short lifespan of the X1800 series. Now that ATI has these incredibly powerful cards available to consumers, we're interested to see how future games will put this card to good use.
ATI has been successful with their All-In-Wonder line of multimedia graphics cards, and have been good about making them available on a wide variety of their cards. We recently reviewed the AIW 2006 which was based on the X1300, and ATI have apparently wasted no time in coming out with an All-In-Wonder card based on their newest part, the X1900.
The All-In-Wonder X1900 is the latest thing from ATI and it promises the same quality (if not better) of video and multimedia features we've seen before, on a card with the highest in gaming performance. Until now, the X1800 XL All-In-Wonder was the most powerful version of this card, and we were impressed by its performance. However, the X1900 AIW will obviously be better for gaming, even if it's not quite as powerful as a stock X1900 XT.
Many of the multimedia/video features remain the same as the previous versions, so we will be touching briefly on each feature for those who aren't familiar with what the AIW offers. Because the GPU is clocked lower than a standard X1900, gaming performance will be something for us to look at, and we will be testing the AIW X1900 against a wide range of cards, including the standard X1900 XT and XTX. We've already reviewed a few different All-In-Wonder graphics cards, but for this one, there will be a slight change of focus.
Video quality is something we sometimes take for granted when talking about digital video. Different DVD players can sometimes differ greatly in image quality, and these differences are not all subjective. We will be looking closely at how ATI's latest drivers handle digital video processing with a special HQV benchmark on this card, and we'll also be looking at how it compares to NVIDIA's decoding. There have been some changes by ATI which address some decoding problems in the past, and we're interested to see how well they've done. For now though, lets look at the All-In-Wonder X1900.
ATI is no-doubt enjoying the limelight lately with the release of the X1900, which is no surprise considering their new card puts ATI back in the lead over NVIDIA in the performance category. With some form of the 7800 GTX so long on the top of that list, it's kind of strange seeing an ATI card take its place, especially given the timing of the release and the short lifespan of the X1800 series. Now that ATI has these incredibly powerful cards available to consumers, we're interested to see how future games will put this card to good use.
ATI has been successful with their All-In-Wonder line of multimedia graphics cards, and have been good about making them available on a wide variety of their cards. We recently reviewed the AIW 2006 which was based on the X1300, and ATI have apparently wasted no time in coming out with an All-In-Wonder card based on their newest part, the X1900.
The All-In-Wonder X1900 is the latest thing from ATI and it promises the same quality (if not better) of video and multimedia features we've seen before, on a card with the highest in gaming performance. Until now, the X1800 XL All-In-Wonder was the most powerful version of this card, and we were impressed by its performance. However, the X1900 AIW will obviously be better for gaming, even if it's not quite as powerful as a stock X1900 XT.
Many of the multimedia/video features remain the same as the previous versions, so we will be touching briefly on each feature for those who aren't familiar with what the AIW offers. Because the GPU is clocked lower than a standard X1900, gaming performance will be something for us to look at, and we will be testing the AIW X1900 against a wide range of cards, including the standard X1900 XT and XTX. We've already reviewed a few different All-In-Wonder graphics cards, but for this one, there will be a slight change of focus.
Video quality is something we sometimes take for granted when talking about digital video. Different DVD players can sometimes differ greatly in image quality, and these differences are not all subjective. We will be looking closely at how ATI's latest drivers handle digital video processing with a special HQV benchmark on this card, and we'll also be looking at how it compares to NVIDIA's decoding. There have been some changes by ATI which address some decoding problems in the past, and we're interested to see how well they've done. For now though, lets look at the All-In-Wonder X1900.
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Sunrise089 - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
You have identical numbers for w/ AA and w/o. Also, the text's comment on the X1900AIW being playable at all reolutions with AA uses the incorrect numbers.plonk420 - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
does the ATI decoder give you the option to ADD sharpening? or not at all? my whole reason for wanting a (hardware accellerated) software decoder is so i can have a pic quality rivaling a ("popular") $200 hardware player for whatever extra it would be for the software. supposedly free for ATI or $30 for nVidia (for my application: 2.0 sound)hwhacker - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
here we go:http://www.bytesector.com/data/bs-article.asp?ID=6...">http://www.bytesector.com/data/bs-article.asp?ID=6...
590/684...I was close.
18+% improvement in 3dmark06, you know that has to translate to something good in gaming.
hwhacker - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
It uses 2.0ns chips from what I recall, as does newer BBA x1800xl's (instead of 1.4ns).There was one site that did an overclocking section on it, I forget which. The results were similar to x1800xl's, the end clock speed ending up 600+/almost 700 iirc. You know how XL's clock, i'm sure.
So in essence, yes, it overclocks well, and I do remember the site being amazed by the performance improvement through overclocking. I still don't get how 2.0ns chips can hit 1.4ns speeds if there is a speed bin in-between for cards like nvidia's 7800gt/gtx that you would think use that supply...but i've seen quite a few cards with the newer, slower, chips hitting the same approx speeds as the old ones with 1.4ns, and i'm not complaining. ;)
I'm sure with the overclock or ATiTool soft-vmods this thing would be killer, especially with better cooling than the known-for-sucking XL stock cooler.
Shadowmage - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
What I'm curious to know is whether the AIW can overclock to roughly XT/XTX speeds.What type of RAM does the AIW use?
Zebo - Saturday, February 11, 2006 - link
Agreed. How can AT not include this? Lame.DigitalFreak - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
Although I appreciate the DVD decoder tests, how is this review related to the AIW features of the card?highlandsun - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
I would have been more interested in seeing how well it handled H.264 decoding at 1920x1080p.oxid - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
does the 7800 gt use another video processor then the GTX? because in the last review with the HQV tests the 7800 gtx scored better then the gt in this review...mpeavid - Friday, February 10, 2006 - link
You guys need to use the exact same frame as an example for all cadence tests. Not doing so can invalidate your test.