ATI All-In-Wonder 128 Pro


ATI AllInWonder 128 Pro - Page 2

The All-In-Wonder 128 Pro
3D, TV and the "Kitchen Sink"

 5/31/00 - By, Marco ?BigWop? Chiappetta

 

Installation & Setup Of The All In Wonder 128 Pro
High Quality Gear

The card itself, as well as the included cables, are all of very high quality.  The board layout is clean and when mounted in a case is very unobtrusive.  There is a fairly large heat sink mounted on the Rage 128 Pro chip, but an active cooling unit would have been a better choice in my opinion.  The chip generates a fair amount of heat. A heat sink fan combo would have kept the temperature much lower as well as prolong the overall life of the card.  If you don't mind losing the adjacent PCI slot however, the stock heat sink is large enough to mount a 486 fan directly to it.

Installation was very easy and straightforward but there is a certain procedure I recommend you follow.   Make sure you remove your current video card?s drivers completely and set your display adapter to standard VGA. Then after you physically install the card, do not let it find the drivers on the CD when the ?found new hardware? dialog box pops up.  Doing it that way will only install the video drivers and nothing else.  Instead, skip past those dialog boxes and run the setup from the supplied CD.  Doing this will install all the extra drivers needed for the TV tuner and all the applications necessary for DVD playback and video capture etc.  I would also like to say the manuals that come with the All In Wonder 128 Pro, are fantastic.  You won?t find any single page Xerox copied manuals in one of these boxes.  There are complete manuals for installation and operation of all the features included.

Once installed, ATI offers something that I have yet to see in drivers from other manufacturers.  The last time I saw this was when I reviewed the ATI Xpert 2000.  In device manager, if you go to your display adapter properties, you?ll find a diagnostics page:

There are tests for memory, DAC and others that would no doubt come in handy should you be diagnosing a problem, or even if you?re placing a call to tech support.  I know, I know?You, call tech support? NEVER! But many prospective buyers of this type of card may need the extra insight.

The drivers also give you access to control over just about every aspect of the card...



(ATI's  Anti-Aliasing didn't produce any noticeable changes in image quality)

 

As you can see, you have quite a bit of control of this board.  Just in case you were wondering, these are not the settings we used when testing performance.

 

2D Quality and Video Features/Performance

 

Tags:  ATI, pro

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