ATI AIW Radeon 9800 Pro

[cncnb]

I was wondering if anyone has tried this video card yet. I do a good bit of editing for work and was looking at getting it. Being that its a little pricey, I was wanting to check with someone who has used it.
Thanks

[Boba_Fett]

As an internal capture card, it is pretty much as good as you can get. For gaming, it is (sadly) a little outdated (i.e. you won't be able to play Doom III full-tilt with it). www.videohelp.com has tons of user reviews on nearly all capture cards...

[LoneWolf]

For any other games than Doom 3 though, the AIW 9800 Pro should still pack a decent punch. Far Cry and CS: Source should play well on it, even Doom 3 will still be reasonable at 1024x768 Medium Quality. Just my .02, but I don't think Doom 3 is a good game to solely base purchases on. Less OpenGL games are on the market than DirectX9 ones, and ATI's got DirectX down quite well. Do you do more video work, or more gaming?

P.S. Still running a Radeon 9700 (clocked to 9700Pro speeds) and D3 runs just fine at 1024x768 Medium, though I may try turning it to High and then dropping FSAA a notch to see if I can do it. High is right on the edge of playable.

[cncnb]

Thanks for your input. I was on the fence on this board. You know, if you put that much in one, you hate to buy it one just one recomendation and a few reviews. It will mostly be used to do video editing for our business but i'm sure a few games will get played on it too. Thanks again

[LoneWolf]

Thanks for your input. I was on the fence on this board. You know, if you put that much in one, you hate to buy it one just one recomendation and a few reviews. It will mostly be used to do video editing for our business but i'm sure a few games will get played on it too. Thanks again

One other handy tip: You could run a non-ATI card as your primary VGA, and then run a PCI slot ATI All-In-Wonder 7500 as your secondary video. Might take a bit of finagleing, but it should work. You'll be required to use an ATI card as your primary VGA as well due to some of their drivers/apps, but this way you can use whichever ATI gaming card you want, and the AIW 7500 is only a $100-125 part new, and you'll never have to change it out. Worth a thought. For more info on this, check out the best site I know of for ATI forums and discussions:

http://www.rage3d.com

[trebor]

Has anyone had any problem with capture quality using this card? I was trying to capture video from a VHS player, and the captured video was horrible. This was using both composite video and S-video. I finally punted the card and looped everything thru my Sony Digital 8, and used firewire for the capture process. What a pain! I would like anyone's experiences with a similar problem.

[TheWizard]

What was the specs of the output video? I only capture in raw AVI form and then covert it to compressed AVI (DivX/XviD) or WMV later. Raw AVI produces the best results, from what I have seen, and has the least amount of dropped frames. You'll need a large hard drive if you want to capture raw AVI as the files tend to run on the big side.

[trebor]

The video was being captured in both AVI and MPEG2. I have tried the ATI MMC 9.0, pinnacle, roxio, all with no better results. I believe that the tuner/composite input is marginal at best. I am trying to verify that it is not just the card. I could get a replacement if that is the case.

[bobmitchell]

A couple of factors can inhibit the quality of the capture. I have the AIW 9800 Pro and first off have NO problems with any games, including Doom 3 with this card. My rig is a 3.2 GHZ P4 with 1GB of ram...and no slow downs, pauses or anything.

As for capture...I use MMC 9.03. I have had no capture problems even when I used version 8X of MMC. My processor is powerful enough. I capture in mp2 and go straight to Sonic MyDVD to encode and burn. My videos (Hi 8 and VHS) are all decent quality. Again...the old adage of what goes in comes out...actually applies. My Hi8 captures are better than the VHS...not because of the AIW...but because of the natural resolution of each format. When I convert and burn to DVD...I am quite pleased with the quality of what I see. The idea of looping through firewire is NOT foreign. What you are seeing is a Time Base Shift, which causes wavy lines, etc. in the capture. There are things like Time Base Correctors http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control ... 891&is=REG that you can use...or do what you already do TREBOR...which is use your firewire port of your Sony Digital 8 to do the time base correction for you. This issue and more have been discussed at www.rage3d.com

All in all...the AIW 9800 Pro is still a pretty good card if you are using AGP. Currently, the most updated card that ATI makes is the x600 AIW for PCI Express...and even they are hard to find.

Again...I capture 740 x 480 Mp2 straight from the get go with my AIW 9800 Pro and get decent DVD's in the process. I have converted about 30 of my home movies to DVD already with probably another 30 to go...and have no real complaints...Oftentimes...the quality is also effected by the VHS player that I use to convert...if I use my old camera...comes out like garbage. I use a fairly new VHS deck and keep it clean...so far so good.

Bob

[Boba_Fett]

A couple of factors can inhibit the quality of the capture. I have the AIW 9800 Pro and first off have NO problems with any games, including Doom 3 with this card. My rig is a 3.2 GHZ P4 with 1GB of ram...and no slow downs, pauses or anything.

Wouldn't that be relative to what resolution and graphical settings you chose? Technically, a Geforce 4 MX 440 (think Geforce 2 ti Super-Duper-Ultra) could run Doom III good, but it will still look like ass. I wasn't downing the 9800 PRO, I used to own one, but it just can't keep up with todays latest games at max graphical settings (no card has infinite staying power anyway...). Hell, my Geforce 6800 GT 256MB (at Ultra Speeds) was kinda chuggin' with Half-Life 2 at pretty much max, and that card is probably 100% faster than a Radeon 9800 PRO.

[LoneWolf]

Wouldn't that be relative to what resolution and graphical settings you chose? Technically, a Geforce 4 MX 440 (think Geforce 2 ti Super-Duper-Ultra) could run Doom III good, but it will still look like ass. I wasn't downing the 9800 PRO, I used to own one, but it just can't keep up with todays latest games at max graphical settings (no card has infinite staying power anyway...). Hell, my Geforce 6800 GT 256MB (at Ultra Speeds) was kinda chuggin' with Half-Life 2 at pretty much max, and that card is probably 100% faster than a Radeon 9800 PRO.

What res? My 6800 128MB non-ultra runs HL2 great at 1024x768 with all detail settings at high. Haven't tried 1280x1024, though I really ought to, seeing as my performance is so good. What CPU are you using, Fett?

[SA]

I actually have the AIW 9600 PRO. I use it mainly for video capture. It does well except when capturing from some video tapes. It distorts a portion of the screen coming from some VHS home movies, so it has nothing to do with copy protection. The problem is mentioned on the videohelp.com forums quite often. There is no fix.

If I had the choice again. I would get a seperate capture card.