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Quality and Setup of the
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 |
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Looking Good... |
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Quality:
When we
first took a look at the card, we were impressed with how
tight all of the components were packed on the PCB.
ATI can really squeeze a lot of components onto a PCB,
without needing to increase its size unnecessarily. At
the heart of the card is the Radeon 7500 GPU running at
260MHz. Although the GPU runs very cool, even when
overclocked, ATI did the right thing by adding active
cooling to the GPU. The main selling points of the
Radeon 7500 GPU are the 2.11 Charisma Engine, Pixel Tapestry
Archetecture and HYPERZ Technology. The Charisma
Engine boasts the ability to handle key DirectX 8 functions,
such as Keyframe Interpolation and 4-Matrix Vertex Skinning.
Pixel Tapestry Architecture is the cards rendering engine,
handling all bump mapping processes as well as environmental
mapping. The HYPERZ technology increases memory
bandwidth by 20% without the need to increase the memory
speed, by not rendering objects in a scene that are not
visible.
Click To
Enlarge
64MB of DDR RAM
complement the GPU, running at 180MHz. and a Philips tuner
module drives all of the TV features of the All-In-Wonder
Radeon 7500.
With all the features on the backside of the card, this left
little room for ATI to accommodate both DVI and Analog
monitor connections. So they took a new approach,
including an adapter that easily converts the on-board DVI
to the more popular analog connector. This however, is
not the most ideal design in our opinion. There have
been rumors around the net of people having difficulty with
this adapter with certain computer cases. Apparently
some slots on these cases are slightly narrower at the base
of the adapter, making it difficult to seat properly.
The adapter also appears to increase the stress on the card
if a thick monitor cable is connected. Perhaps if they
made the adapter flexible the seating problems would be
resolved and there would be less stress placed on the card
itself.
Remote
Control:
One of the most
useful features of the All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 is the RF
Remote control. Using Radio Frequency, the remote
control can operate the card from other rooms, not requiring
a clear line of sight as with conventional infrared remotes.
With the card connected to a TV in another room, a user can
easily control the card while watching a television program
or DVD. I must admit that initially I thought that
this might be a bit if a gimmick, but once the card was up
and running, using the remote turned out to be a real
pleasure. This is without a doubt one of the best
features to be included with a TV card. It was
refreshing to realize that ATi didn't reserve this option
for just the higher end Radeon 8500DV.
Next we'll cover setting up some of the external devices.
Setup:
Once we had the
card installed, setting up the added cabling was a snap with
the easy to follow diagrams included in the package.
ATI obviously went through great lengths to make this part
of the installation as simple as possible, even for a
novice. Once we had the ATI adapter installed,
connecting to a DVD player, VCR or TV was simple and
painless.
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Drivers of the
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 |
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Lots of Options. |
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The driver
package included with the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 is
loaded with options. As we perused the various tabs,
we found numerous settings available to let us customize how
the card behaved. Whether adjusting simple 2D
processes or needing to control how the card handled DirectX
and OpenGL games, ATI has covered all of the bases.
Below are a few screenshots to demonstrate what features are
available.
Click To
Enlarge
Next up, we will
take a look at some of the software that comes with the ATI
All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 and then we'll start putting the
card to the test!
Software and 3DMark2001SE
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