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How would you like to watch TV in a window while you work? How about using your computer as a digital VCR? Wouldn't it be nice if you could get all that plus great 2D and 3D acceleration on one card? ATI hopes to make that dream a reality with their latest offering - the All-in-Wonder 128.

As noted in AnandTech's Matrox Marvel G200 Review, it has been quite difficult for companies to successfully produce a multifunction device that excels in all areas. ATI's original All-in-Wonder Pro featured the Rage Pro chipset, which did a reasonable job as a TV tuner and 2D card, but fell flat on its face with weak 3D performance and support. Video capture support was reasonable, but the proprietary ATI VCR 1.0 or 2.0 format made the video unusable on non-ATI systems.

The Marvel G200 came along and promised all the features of the All-in-Wonder plus greatly improved 2D and 3D acceleration thanks to Matrox's own G200 chip on board. While 2D support was great, 3D support was merely pretty good. The G200 excelled at high image quality with true 32-bit rendering, but the performance was not quite there. The real kicker was the lack of an OpenGL ICD, which was supposed to be delivered with the Mystique G200 upon its release. Matrox has only recently released a beta of that ICD that still is not fully optimized.

Back in December, AnandTech took a look at a prerelease ATI Rage Fury board. It performed quite admirably, featured hardware DVD acceleration, and proved 3dfx wrong by providing only a minor performance penalty when 32-bit rendering was enabled. It seemed like there was finally a real competitor to nVidia's TNT.

The Rage Fury was of course based around the Rage 128 chip from ATI, a company that had traditionally been a leader in OEM sales, but lagged somewhat behind the performance curve when it came to 3D acceleration. The Rage 128 was ATI's attempt to take back the lead in 2D and 3D performance. This .25 micron chip features a 128-bit engine, complete OpenGL ICD, hardware DVD decoding, and an "advanced graphics architecture with superscalar rendering, line and edge anti-aliasing, gouraud shading, twin cache architecture, single-pass multi-texturing and bump mapping."

We all hoped that ATI would take the Rage 128 and combine it with the functionality of the All-in-Wonder series to create a new standard in multifunction devices. Well, it looks like it has finally happened with the All-in-Wonder 128. Fortunately for us, ATI did not just slap the Rage 128 into the old design, but has in fact implemented much greater functionality with the new All-in-Wonder 128.

Highlights

• Powerful 128 bit 3D and 2D graphics
• "Intelligent" TV Tuner featuring Instant Replay
• Enable Web TV for Windows98
• Leading edge video including Digital VCR real-time software compression
• TV-out for big screen gaming

Features

Powerful 128-bit 3D graphics Acceleration

ALL-IN-WONDER 128 is powered by ATI's newest graphics technology, RAGE 128GL, and up to 32MB of memory to deliver the ultimate 3D experience. This translates into stunning 3D gaming action that your entire family can enjoy. ALL-IN-WONDER 128 offers full support for DirectX 6.0 and OpenGL and includes a host of advanced 3D features such as Triangle Setup Engine, SuperScalar Rendering, Single Pass Multi-texturing and Twin Cache Architecture all of which can process massive graphics textures resulting in smooth animation and life-like graphics without slowing down performance.

TV Tuner
ALL-IN-WONDER 128's built-in TV Tuner lets you do more on your PC than you ever imagined. Choose your own close-ups, create a TV magazine, schedule the viewing of your favorite shows, or even scan through all available stations for an at-a-glance look at what's on. And if you miss something there is instant replay too! Use the "Hot Words" real time word notification feature to watch TV for you and notify you when words or phrases you specify are detected.

Enable Web TV for Windows
ALL-IN-WONDER 128 lets you maximize your Windows 98 experience because it supports more Windows 98 features than any other graphics card. With ALL-IN-WONDER 128's built-in TV tuner technology, users can enable Web TV for Windows 98 which brings interactive TV programming right to your desktop PC. Search for your favorite shows, schedule programming and discover interesting TV facts all with ALL-IN-WONDER 128 and Web TV.

Leading Edge Video including Digital VCR
No other graphics card comes close to matching ALL-IN-WONDER 128's advanced video capabilities. ALL-IN-WONDER 128's Digital VCR, featuring real-time powerful software video compression lets you use your PC to record your favorite TV shows without filling your entire hard-drive. The Digital VCR uses the ATI VCR 2.0 codec to empower your Pentium II™ processor to compress video on-the-fly, as you're viewing it. This allows you to capture up to 9 times more video than ever before, using the same amount of disk space!

Revolutionary Video capabilities
With ALL-IN-WONDER 128's DVD hardware you can view full-screen, full-frame DVD video playback. Enjoy true color video in any graphics mode and full-frame rate playback in Windows 95 or Windows 98 as if you were watching it on your TV thanks to the Scaling Video Overlay. ALL-IN-WONDER 128 also lets you capture still and moving images from VCRs, camcorders and laserdiscs, bringing digital video to any project and making presentations, school projects and Web sites come to life. ALL-IN-WONDER 128 also supports popular video conferencing packages through Video for Windows as well as WDM/DirectShow capture driver support.

TV-out
With ALL-IN-WONDER 128's TV-out feature you'll be able to play your favorite 3D games on any TV screen, with remarkable quality and 3D power that only ATI can deliver. You can even display PC video clips, high-quality graphics or text on the big screen. It's simple with ALL-IN-WONDER 128 - just connect your PC to a TV and away you go.

Built-in hardware DVD
ALL-IN-WONDER 128 sets the new standard in video playback. With built-in hardware DVD (which saves you the expense of buying a separate MPEG-2 decoder card), ALL-IN-WONDER 128 processes full-frame rate, full-screen DVD video for a true multimedia experience on your PC. ALL-IN-WONDER 128's 4-tap filtered video plays back top quality AVI files.

Specifications

System Requirements

• Windows 98
• Windows 95
• PCI version: Pentium/Pro/II or compatible systems with PCI. 33 MHz PCI local bus 2.1
• AGP version: Pentium II or compatible with AGP 2X bus (AGP 1.0 compliant)
• Sound Card supported by Windows 98/95 with available Line Input
• Software supplied on CD ROM
• DVD movie playback requires DVD ROM drive

TV SET DISPLAY REQUIREMENTS FOR VIDEO OUTPUT

• TV or VCR with S-Video or Composite Video Input (ALL-IN-WONDER 128 supports the video standard used in the country in which it is sold)

TV TUNER REQUIREMENTS

• TV signal from Amplified Antenna or Cable Foreign version also available supporting NTSC-J, PAL I, PAL B/G and Secam L (ALL-IN-WONDER 128 supports the video standard used in the country in which it is sold. Features may vary from country to country.)

BUS

• PCI Local Bus 2.1 compliant
• AGP Local Bus 1.0 compliant

MEMORY CONFIGURATIONS

• 16MB SDRAM version (non-upgradeable)
• 32MB SDRAM version (non-upgradeable)

DRIVERS INCLUDED

• Windows 95 Display and Multimedia Drivers, Windows 98 Display and Multimedia Drivers, ATI TV Tuner and Multimedia Software Application.

CONNECTORS

• Input and Output connectors for Audio and Video input and output connections. Composite and S-Video Inputs and Outputs included.

WARRANTY

• 5 year Limited

2D Display Modes (16MB version):
Resolutions, Colors and Maximum Refresh Rates (HZ)

Monitor Resolution	640x480	800x600	1024x768	1152x864	1280x1024	1600x1200	1920x1200
256 colors	200	200	180	160	125	85	76
65K colors	200	200	180	160	125	85	76
16.7M colors	200	200	180	160	125	85	76

Maximum 3D Resolutions¹ (16MB version):

	16MB
65K colors	1600x1200
16.7M colors	1280x1024

1. Maximum 3D resolutions and colors supported using double buffered settings.

The Ultimate All-in-one TV, Video, and Graphics card?

That's what ATI claims on the All-in-Wonder 128 box - that is certainly a lot to live up to. A look at the feature set shows that there is the potential for ATI to come through. The All-in-Wonder 128 provides a TV-tuner, digital VCR for video capture, the Rage 128 graphics core for great 2D and 3D, video-out, and hardware DVD playback - all on a single card and retailing at just $249.

Hardware

The card itself is a little longer than a standard Rage Fury board and features quite a few more components. The most obvious is the big silver box that contains most of the TV-Tuner functionality. The silver box provides shielding to the computer from the TV signal the signal from the computer. Besides the standard CATV coax and monitor connectors, there are two more proprietary ones. One facilitates input to the card and the other output from the card. A break out box handles the audio/video RCA and S-video inputs, while a "dongle" (it looks like a splitter cable) takes care of audio out to your sound card and TV-out. S-video and RCA video jacks are available for both input and output. It would have been nice if ATI had used a single box for input and output.

A small heatsink has now been added to the Rage 128 chip (allowing for an increased clock rate - now up to 105MHz according Powerstrip). Eight 2MB 8ns SDRAM chips make up the 16MB SDRAM total. The combination of ATI's ImpacTV2 and Brooktree BT829 chips provide for video input/output and video capture. Standard MPC2 CD-IN and CD-OUT connectors are also onboard, allowing the sound from your CD-ROM drive to pass through the All-in-Wonder 128 to your sound card.

Software

ATI's Multimedia Center provides a uniform interface across all their programs, which includes TV-tuner, video capture, video editor, DVD player, Video-CD player, and an Audio CD player. All can easily be launched from the ATI Launchpad (shown at right), which can be docked to the side of the screen or just float anywhere.

MGI Software's Videowave II, a $100 video editing package, will be bundled with the retail card, but was not available at the time of testing. ATI tops it off with the full version of EA's Moto Racer 2 and the "lite" version of Rage's Expendable. A coupon for the full version of Expendable will be included in the box and will ship when the game is completed.

TV-tuner

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The TV-tuner component works quite well and has a number of unique features. The TV display can be within a window, full screen, or as your Windows desktop background. Thanks to the Rage 128's excellent video scaling abilities, the image quality is as good as the signal given to it - an S-video input from a DVD player was crystal clear, even when scaled to full screen in 1600x1200 resolution.

By far the coolest feature, and possibly the most useful, is the ability for an instant replay at any time. Imagine your watching a basketball game and someone makes a phenomenal play, but you miss it and they never seem to show a replay of what you want to see. No problem for the All-in-Wonder 128 - at the touch of a button, the All-in-Wonder 128 can replay the last few minutes (limited only by available memory), which can optionally be recorded using the digital VCR (see below).

Channel surfers rejoice! All it takes is one button for the All-in-Wonder 128 to show you a still image from every available channel allowing you to see what is on every channel simultaneously. From there, you can select exactly what you want to see with the click of a button.

Advanced closed captioning features are also included that allow the highlighting of any word you are interested in. The entire closed captioned transcript, along with intermittent snapshots, can be saved to a TV Magazine for later reference.

Web TV

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With the release of Windows 98, Microsoft has included their WebTV for Windows software that allows for a whole new way to watch TV using your PC. WebTV for Windows is nothing like the set top boxes that allow you to browse the internet on your TV without a computer. WebTV for Windows should allow a whole new level of interactive TV - once it is completely supported that is.

A program guide is downloaded and shows you everything that is on in plain text. A small preview of the channel is shown at right. You can then select what you want to watch with the click of the mouse.

ATI is actually the reference standard that Microsoft uses for developing WebTV for Windows, so it is no surprise that the All-in-Wonder 128 is compatible. Unfortunately, a program guide for my area was unavailable, so none of that information is filled out in the picture above. However, it is quite clear that the interface is very slick, working much like some DSS programming guides.

Hardware DVD & TV-Output

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The hardware DVD and TV-output features of the All-in-Wonder 128 are identical to that of the original Rage 128 AnandTech tested back in December. Here is the appropriate portion of that review:

Just as you thought that Hardware DVD was becoming a thing of the past, ATI brings back to our attention that CPU utilization is still an important factor to consider, especially when a part of the tweaking population considers multitasking an absolute must. The quality of the DVD playback on the Rage 128 is virtually identical to just about any other hardware DVD decoder out there, with a major difference, the Rage 128 doubles as a 2D/3D video card, whose CPU utilization isn't high enough to cause a significant drop in performance while multi-tasking with a DVD window open.

While AnandTech didn't have a suite of DVD decoders to compare the Rage 128 to, the test systems, ranging from an old K6/200 to a high end Pentium II 450 machine, AnandTech played around with all exhibited virtually identical behavior in terms of DVD playback with the Rage 128. So long as you have a decent processor (Super7 users included!), the DVD playback on the Rage 128 isn't bad at all, and an excellent alternative to buying an external unit. Although, personally, I still do prefer a regular DVD player outside of my computer to do some serious movie watching, simply because there is still no experience like going out, renting a few movies, then popping a few kernels of microwave popcorn without the "soothing" buzz from your computer in the background.

The Rage 128 cards that'll be hitting the store shelves shortly will have TV-Output as an option, in comparison to the output on the Marvel/Mystique G200 boards, the Rage 128 is maybe a step or two behind in terms of quality. However the picture is still good enough to play a quick game of Quake 2 or Half-Life from a distance on a 35" TV without becoming disgusted at the quality too quickly, just don't plan on typing any word processing documents on your TV though.

Digital VCR Video Capture

This is one of the most exciting features of the All-in-Wonder 128 and probably the primary reason for purchasing it. Video captures up to 720x480 resolution at 30 frames per second are possible from the coax TV, audio/video RCA, or the S-video inputs in any available format. To perform a video capture, all you have to do is hit the record button using the ATI Television program.

The card itself supports capturing in raw (uncompressed) YUV9, ATI VCR 1.0, ATI VCR 2.0, MPEG-1, or MPEG-2 video formats. The capture format that should be used varies depending on the intended use of the video and how much CPU power is available. Everyone can, of course, play raw uncompressed video, but the file sizes are simply unreasonable. In all cases, a hard drive capable of keeping up with the data being written is necessary. Raw video does require quite a bit of sustained hard drive performance.

The VCR 1.0 and 2.0 formats are proprietary ATI formats, but may be playable on other systems using AVI extensions. However, it is difficult (ie not possible with most software, including ATI's) to edit MPEG-1 or 2 video streams, making the VCR formats still very useful. According to ATI, this may change as MPEG formats increase in popularity. For distribution purposes, the final edited video can be saved in either of the two MPEG formats.

The best format for distributing video is most likely MPEG-1 since it is widely accepted and almost everyone has the appropriate CODEC for playback (it is now included in Microsoft's Windows Media Player). MPEG-1 provides approximately VHS level quality and is used in Video-CD's. The compression level is better than the ATI VCR formats and is more universally accepted. MPEG-2 is gaining popularity and will play using just about any software DVD player since DVD is just MPEG-2 video. Compression and quality levels are higher than that of MPEG-1, but of course require the most CPU power.

Of course, the available formats are heavily dependent on what CPU is in use. The following table, provided by ATI, gives the estimated CPU requirements for capture at 30 fps with CD quality 16-bit 44kHz audio using the various formats:

All-in-Wonder 128 Capture Formats
Format	Frame Size	MB/min	Min/GB	Disk Space for 30 Min	Recommended Minimum System
Raw (uncompressed) YUV9	320x240	151	6.63	4,525	Pentium-133
Raw (uncompressed) YUV9	640x480	595	1.68	17,863	Pentium-233
VCR 1.0	320x240	85	11.76	2,551	Pentium-200
VCR 1.0	640x480	333	3.01	9,979	Pentium II-300
VCR 2.0	320x240	33	30.64	979	Pentium II-300
VCR 2.0	640x480	99	10.14	2,959	Pentium II-400
MPEG-1 with MPEG layer 2 audio	352x240, I frame only	25	40.26	745	Pentium-200 MMX
MPEG-1 with MPEG layer 2 audio	352x240, IBP frames	13	77.88	385	Pentium II-300
MPEG-2 with MPEG layer 2 audio	640x480, I frame only	46	21.82	1,375	Pentium II-450
MPEG-2 with MPEG layer 2 audio	640x480, IBP frames	25	40.26	745	Pentium III-500

The "I frame" and "IBP frames" mentioned in the table above refer to the type of reference frames used by the MPEG compression. A good technical explanation of this and other MPEG issues is available here. IBP frames requires referring to the next frame in addition to the previous frame, which is obviously pretty complicated and, thus, requires more CPU power. MPEG-2 at 640x480 requires the SSE instructions of a Pentium III in order to accomplish 30fps capture if IBP frames compression is used. However, the advantage is obvious - the table above shows that the IBP frames method provides approximately double the compression of I frame alone.

Once size and compatibility considerations are taken into account, MPEG-1 with IBP frames compression is probably the most practical and does not require a very high-end CPU. To top it off, it is the smallest available format in terms of disk space. As mentioned above, MPEG-1 compression will give approximately VHS quality video. Of course, 640x480 MPEG-2 is absolutely gorgeous, near DVD quality, and if you've got the horsepower and disk space for it, that is definitely the way to go.

It is worth noting here that ATI's video compression algorithm is one of the few pieces of software that supports MMX and even SSE. In fact, the power of SSE is required for doing full 640x480 IBP frames MPEG-2 capture. Video capture with non-Intel CPU's is of course supported, but there are no optimizations for 3DNow! built into the current software. However, it is something ATI is looking into implementing in the future.

Users with low speed CPU's without MMX may want to simply stick with the All-in-Wonder Pro since you will not be able to take advantage of the improved compression methods supported by the All-in-Wonder 128.

The Test

AnandTech has previously shown the performance of the Rage 128 chip to be outstanding, and as such, these benchmarks are not a comprehensive set. For further details, check out our first Rage 128 review. AnandTech will also have a complete review of the final Rage Fury board shortly that will contain all the benchmarks you can stand, including Super 7 systems.

The AnandTech Test System Configuration was as follows:

• Intel Pentium II 400
• ABIT BH6 Pentium II BX Motherboard
• 64MB PC100 SDRAM
• Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
• ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Beta board (16MB SDRAM)
• Matrox Marvel G200 AGP Video Card (16MB SDRAM)
• nVidia Riva TNT (16MB SDRAM)

All Winbench 2D tests were run at 1600 x 1200 x 32 bit color (except the G200 which only supported 24 bit color at that resolution), all gaming performance tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16 bit color with vsync off. The latest drivers for all boards were used.

3D Performance

The TNT, Rage 128, and Voodoo 2 are in a race too close to call with Quake 2. The advantage goes to the Rage 128 cards for their relatively small performance hit when switching to 32-bit rendering.

In Direct3D testing under Shogo, the numbers are a little more skewed. The TNT and and Rage 128 begin to lag behind the 3dfx cards. Again, the Rage 128 is still plenty fast to play Shogo.

2D Performance

2D performance of the All-in-Wonder 128 is right up there with the best of them. In business applications, the All-in-Wonder 128 takes the lead over the Marvel G200, but lags behind the TNT and Banshee. Under high end applications, the All-in-Wonder 128 and Marvel G200 switch places. Considering the fact that the G200 is often used as a reference point for good 2D performance, there is no doubt the All-in-Wonder 128 is more than suitable for high resolution 2D work. In fact the 2D image quality is better than that of the Banshee and TNT, but slightly worse than the G200. This difference can easily make up the difference for the slightly slower scores.

Performance Summary

Clearly, the 3D performance of the All-in-Wonder 128 is in a close battle with nVidia's TNT for the lead among these cards and is leaps and bounds ahead of the Marvel G200. Clearly, the All-in-Wonder 128 excels from a performance stand point and has way more features than any TNT board on the market. It may not be able to stand up to the upcoming wave of TNT2's, Voodoo3's, and G400's, but for right now, there is no doubt the Rage 128 is a fast chip - certainly fast enough for the casual gamer. Further, none of those upcoming cards will be available in a form that offers nearly as much functionality as the All-in-Wonder 128. The only question that remains now is how well it stands up to the previous champ of multifunction devices - the Matrox Marvel G200.

ATI All-in-Wonder 128 vs. Matrox Marvel G200

The most natural card to compare the All-in-Wonder 128 to is the Matrox Marvel G200, which provides many of the same features. However, the Marvel is missing some key features and does not perform the features it does have as well as the All-in-Wonder 128. The three biggest differences come in video capture options, DVD support, and 3D performance - probably the three most important areas for many potential customers.

The video capture issue is a matter of available formats - the Marvel G00 only supports video capture using the Motion-JPEG (M-JPEG) format, which greatly limits the flexibility of its video capture compared to the ATI All-in-Wonder 128. First and foremost, M-JPEG is not a universally accepted format and finding a CODEC for it is not so easy. This makes distribution of the recorded video a more difficult task than it should be. The second problem with M-JPEG is that it requires over three times as much space as MPEG-2 at the same resolution and frame rate. This can be partially attributed to the fact that M-JPEG performs no compression on audio, where as MPEG (1 and 2) achieves 10:1 compression on audio with virtually no quality loss. This is a major issue since CD quality audio can add up extremely quickly - remember, those 650MB CD's only hold 74 minutes of audio. To top it off, MPEG just flat out performs better compression as shown below:

M-JPEG is at a slight disadvantage in the graph above since it performs no compression on the audio portion and CD audio of course takes a lot of space quickly as mentioned above. However, M-JPEG with no audio what so ever would only reduce the file size by approximately 5%, no where near enough to bring it to the level of MPEG.

DVD playback is another area where All-in-Wonder 128 really excels thanks to built in hardware DVD decoding. The Marvel G200 does support DVD playback, but you must use either software decoding or purchase a $99 hardware DVD daughter board. The software decoding of the G200 requires more CPU power and does not look nearly as good as that of the hardware Rage 128 decoder. The DVD daughter board for the G200 was not available for comparison.

Then there is the question of 3D performance, which is a little unfair to the older Marvel G200, but which must still be addressed. The Rage 128 chip used on the All-in-Wonder 128 brings to the table a much more complete feature set than the G200 featured on the Marvel. The G200 features just half the raw fillrate of the Rage 128 - 100Mpixels/s for the G200 compared to 200Mpixels/s for the Rage 128. The Rage 128 also features single pass multitexturing support, while the G200 must take two rendering passes to apply the same two textures. Matrox and ATI have both built in full AGP 2X support into these chips. Both chips feature a full 32-bit rendering pipeline, including 32-bit Z-buffering, but the Rage 128 takes a much smaller performance hit when 32-bit rendering is enabled. Finally, the Rage 128 features a full OpenGL ICD for both Windows 9x and NT, while the Matrox has only now (after 8 months) released the second beta of their OpenGL ICD that only works under Windows 9x and does not even work with the Marvel G200 drivers. Not surprisingly, the benchmarks on the previous page show that the G200 lags seriously behind the Rage 128 in 3D performance. 2D performance is comparable and the G200 appears to have a better AGP implementation.

The Marvel G200 does get the edge for its excellent break out box, which features all the video input and output connectors hooked to the Marvel by a single cable, so you will never have to climb under your desk to plug something in. The All-in-Wonder 128 does use a break out box (which, incidentally is much smaller) that features just the audio/video RCA and S-video inputs, so you will be able to constantly change inputs with no problem. However, it still uses a "dongle" (it looks like a splitter cable) that attaches to the back of the card for audio out and TV-out. The coaxial CATV plug is also on the actual All-in-Wonder 128 card, but is found on the Marvel's break out box. The last issue with the break out box is that the Marvel's has a SPDIF output for digital audio that is not available on the 16MB All-in-Wonder (but will be added to the 32MB version). The whole break out box issue is irrelevant if you leave all these components hooked up all the time. However, if you only use the TV-out or TV-tuner occasionally, it could become a minor pain with the All-in-Wonder 128.

The Marvel G200 also has a more flexible TV-out option that supports up to 1024x768 compared with the ATI's maximum of 800x600. Both cards have excellent 2D performance and support - Matrox gets a slight edge here for their excellent 2D utilities, although the Rage 128's are not bad and ATI may be improve them in the future with features like virtual desktops. ATI's multimedia center definitely beats out Matox's by including many additional features, such as instant replay, "TV Magazine", TV as the desktop background, and the channel surfing preview. Finally, the G200 chips in general have featured excellent 2D image quality that is unmatched by any other card with an integrated RAMDAC. The Rage 128's 2D image quality is certainly above that of the TNT and many other cards, but not quite to the level of the G200.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the Marvel G200 is available as an 8MB card that is upgradable to 16MB, whereas the All-in-Wonder 128 comes with a non upgradable 16MB (see below for information on the upcoming 32MB version). To further rub it in, the All-in-Wonder 128 with 16MB retails for $249 compared to the 8MB Marvel G200's $299 price tag.

Issues

It was not particularly surprising that the beta All-in-Wonder 128 card we received had a number of problems because it is after all beta hardware and software. Fortunately, ATI has vowed to fix at least he major ones by the release of final cards. These problems primarily consisted of driver instability, but all features were implemented and functioned as advertised. AnandTech will revisit this section upon receiving the final board and software.

The Future

ATI already has a 32MB version of the All-in-Wonder 128 that features more than increased RAM. The 32MB card will include ATI's upcoming Rage Theater chip that integrates the functions of the ImpacTV2 and Brooktree BT829 that are used on the 16MB version. The Rage Theater purportedly supports higher quality TV-out and video capture. DVD fans will be pleased to know that a SPDIF digital output will be added to support Dolby Digital AC-3 5.1 surround sound. An SPDIF upgrade will not be offered for the 16MB card because it relies on the Rage Theater chip. Of course, doubling the available RAM will help performance a bit as well, especially in large texture situations, and offer a few extra resolution/color depth options in 3D. Expect the 32MB All-in-Wonder 128 to be released in June 1999 and retail for $299.

Conclusion

The All-in-Wonder 128 is definitely the best multifunction card out there today. The variety of capture formats, including MPEG-2, is unmatched at this level. Real time MPEG compression on a card of this level was unheard of - until now - and will become a new standard that other manufacturers will have to shoot for. The built-in hardware DVD playback is also a major step forward and is not integrated on any other announced 2D/3D chipsets.

The only question that remains is whether ATI can deliver in a timely manner - remember, the Rage Fury was available for review back in December, but is just now (4 monthes later) showing up on retail shelves. ATI assures me that the All-in-Wonder 128 will be available shortly - the ETA is April - and if they come through, they certainly have a winner on their hands. The only question then will be whether to wait for the 32MB version.