ATi AIW X1900 Review

I don't have trouble believing that about the mem. My X1800XL AIW struggles a bit with my 1920x1200 monitor at times (but not quite as much as my 6800GT did, with the same bandwidth). Definitely going tippy-top on that with my R600/NV50 Vista upgrade.

I must say I'm disappointed with the clocks on X1900AIW tho. They had a chain going of making AIW clocks the same as the non-AIW sku, and I think that was wise for these top end AIWs. A part of their charm is "no compromises" --just as good a gaming part as the congruent non-AIW sku and AIW goodness. Ah well.
 
Dave Baumann said:
Repeat after me: low-volume drop-out SKU.
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?

Why didn't they price it higher than? I'd say that this card could prove to be quite popular given the lower price and extra features.
 
Dave Baumann said:
Repeat after me: low-volume drop-out SKU.
Click to expand...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're entitled to their goals, and I'm entitled to blow raspberries at them when they step down a bit from previous practice.

Edit: Having said that, of course anyone looking to upgrade from X800xl AIW or lower ought to go with X1900AIW if they care about gaming. I'm not arguing it isn't a nice bump up from X1800xl AIW.
 
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The multimedia boffins at FiringSquad are up too: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_all_in_wonder_x1900_review/

And, btw, they address my point to a degree:

With the two cards priced so similarly, we wouldn’t be surprised if many consumers have a hard time deciding between the two cards. On one hand, the gamer in you is going to want the X1900 XT for its superior performance, while the gadget side of you will prefer the All-In-Wonder X1900’s multimedia prowess. It’s going to be a hard call for some people to make, and we don’t envy you in your decision. We’d really like to see ATI step up to the plate and deliver an ultra high-end All-In-Wonder card based on the X1900 XT or X1900 XTX, but we honestly don’t see this happening anytime soon. ATI’s multimedia team has been pretty adamant about sticking to single-slot cooling designs for the All-In-Wonder line, so unless ATI’s engineers can figure out a way to cool the X1900 XT/XTX efficiently in just a single slot, odds are such a card will never see the light of day.
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Which is put interestingly, framed by the single-slot cooling point --we don't have a single-slot non-AIW X1900 sku to compare with. Yet, anyway. I should imagine one might appear at some point.
 
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well that's disappointing. No theatre 550 chip and single slot cooling??? Since when has dual slot cooling meant higher noise levels? I can understand the space constraints for small pc's but not the noise. The multi media engineering team needs a reality check. No Digital TV?? :cry: Think I will be waiting for the 2nd version if it happens and I would agree the clocks are a tad disappointing along with the 256 MB's of memory which basically is a big turnoff all round.
 
IgnorancePersonified said:
Since when has dual slot cooling meant higher noise levels?
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I returned a X850XT for a AIW X800XT for that very reason. Noise levels for the dual-slot X850XT at both idle and full load were annoyingly higher than the single-slot X800XT.
 
was the heat output of the chip/mem combo higher or lower on the single slot card? What I am trying to say is just because it's dual slot doesn't make it noisier. If it was noisier in a particular example then it sounds like:))) bad engineering.
 
I wish they had a HDTV tuner.... I have one now as a seperate PCI card but the software's interface is atrocious and I can't find anything else that works for it. From what I have seen with the ATi stuff it is heaps better so I was really keen to get an AIW product. In Australia we get an extra Chanel from the ABC(Ch2) on digital which is not on analogue so going back to analogue is not an option - I now have 3 stations I can stand to watch on Free to air tv :cool:
 
Theater 550 can't be integrated alongside a GPU, sadly.
 
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