AIW upgrade

[/mel/]

I should have realised before spending £300 on an AIW8500DV that it would
cause problems when I came to upgrade. The problem is that now I need faster
3D performance I'm going to have to pay a premium to upgrade the TV aspect
too. I wouldn't mind so much were it not for the fact that by the time I got
a stable configuration the card was obsolete!

Anyway, yes, choices: get another AIW, or split and go for separate video
and TV cards? Are USB2.0 TV cards any good? I must admit that I like the
user interface to the ATI TV application - I don't know what Hauppague is
like these days but the old WinTV card I had was buggy and not easy to use.

I've seen second-hand AIW9800 and AIW9700pro cards for £150 and £110
respectively - would these be a bargain? Would these run Half-Life 2 at a
reasonable rate? How much difference would there be in performance between
these cards, and how much between them and my AIW8500? Most importantly: are
the drivers stable?!

 

[J. Clarke]

I should have realised before spending £300 on an AIW8500DV that it would
cause problems when I came to upgrade. The problem is that now I need
faster 3D performance I'm going to have to pay a premium to upgrade the TV
aspect too. I wouldn't mind so much were it not for the fact that by the
time I got a stable configuration the card was obsolete!

Anyway, yes, choices: get another AIW, or split and go for separate video
and TV cards? Are USB2.0 TV cards any good? I must admit that I like the
user interface to the ATI TV application - I don't know what Hauppague is
like these days but the old WinTV card I had was buggy and not easy to
use.

I've seen second-hand AIW9800 and AIW9700pro cards for £150 and £110
respectively - would these be a bargain? Would these run Half-Life 2 at a
reasonable rate? How much difference would there be in performance between
these cards, and how much between them and my AIW8500? Most importantly:
are the drivers stable?!

I don't know if it's universally true for BT8x8-based boards, but I was
surprised to find that ATI MMC runs my Dvico Fusion board in analog mode
just fine with full ATI functionality. One of these days I'm going to have
to see if it does the same for a Phillips-based analog board.

 

[/mel/]

I don't know if it's universally true for BT8x8-based boards, but I
was surprised to find that ATI MMC runs my Dvico Fusion board in
analog mode just fine with full ATI functionality. One of these days
I'm going to have to see if it does the same for a Phillips-based
analog board.

Now that's interesting. The AIW8500 was unique (I think) in that it uses a
digital tuner rather than the usual analogue type, but I think I'm right in
saying the AIW cards before and after the 8500 used a more conventional
analogue tuner, so yeah, I guess MMC must be capable. I have an old
Hauppauge WinTV card somewhere - I'll dig it out and plug it in, see what
happens!