ATI?s All-In-Wonder line of graphics cards have always been the do-all Swiss Army knife of graphics cards. No other graphics company has been able to replicate ATI?s success in this sector. NVIDIA attempted to go after ATI?s market share with their Personal Cinema series of all-in-one graphics cards but seems to have withdrawn from the market. ATI?s success can probably be attributed to the maturity of their encoders, de-interlacing algorithms, and coupling video capture features to their low-end, mid-range, and high-end offerings, making a card for all sorts of users.

The newest All-In-Wonder comes equipped with ATI?s nearly-a-year-old mid-range GPU?the 16pipe Radeon X800XL. This All-In-Wonder comes in a PCI-Express interface unlike the previously launched All-in-Wonder X800XT. Although ATI released an All-In-Wonder X600 early in the PCI-Express life cycle, the All-In-Wonder X800XL marks ATI?s first performance oriented PCI-Express All-In-Wonder.

A closer look

ATI?s All-In-Wonder X800XL is based on the R430 graphics processor clocked at 400 MHz. There are also 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex shaders.

All the components are placed on a purple PCB that has become traditional of practically every new ATI product. I?m not too fond of the color but it?s different and in an enclosed case it doesn?t really matter. A large heatsink/fan keeps the GPU happy without producing too much noise. Sitting in our Silverstone LC16M test system, the noise is barely noticeable.

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• A closer look cont... (1 of 6)
• Test Setup (2 of 6)
• Media Center 2005 performance, Image quality (3 of 6)
• Video playback (4 of 6)
• Gaming performance (5 of 6)
• Conclusion (6 of 6)