Upgrade/Replacement Question.

[Chuck]

I'm not looking to upgrade and I'm REAL short on funds. However, I want to
free up a PCI slot by removing my ATI TV tuner card and getting in
integrated into the video card. I currently have a 128mb GeForce4 Ti 4800
SE ( 8X AGP ). It's not state of the art, but it does everything I need it
to do and quite nicely.

Which AIW card ( 9500-9800 Pro? ) would be fairly equivalent to my current
card? I see a few AIW's for sale on eBay, I'm just not sure which one I
should be looking for. I need to keep my expenditures to a minimum, but
don't want to take a step backwards in technology just for the free slot.

FWIW, my system specs are:

Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
AMD Athlon XP 2700+
1 Gb RAM (3200)
128mb GF4 Ti 4800 SE
WinXP Pro

 

[Chuck]

I'm not looking to upgrade and I'm REAL short on funds. However, I want to
free up a PCI slot by removing my ATI TV tuner card and getting in
integrated into the video card. I currently have a 128mb GeForce4 Ti 4800
SE ( 8X AGP ). It's not state of the art, but it does everything I need it
to do and quite nicely.

Which AIW card ( 9500-9800 Pro? ) would be fairly equivalent to my current
card? I see a few AIW's for sale on eBay, I'm just not sure which one I
should be looking for. I need to keep my expenditures to a minimum, but
don't want to take a step backwards in technology just for the free slot.

FWIW, my system specs are:

Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
AMD Athlon XP 2700+
1 Gb RAM (3200)
128mb GF4 Ti 4800 SE
WinXP Pro

Not even a nibble.

Can anyone tell me where I can find out which AIW is comparable to my card?

 

[Ben Pope]

Can anyone tell me where I can find out which AIW is comparable to my
card?

It's a difficult one. There are people that say the Ti4800 is faster than a
9800 Pro, but they're not looking at the big picture. If 300fps in Quake3
without AA or AF is more important to you than Pixel Shader support then the
9800 Pro is "comparable" in terms of FPS.

If you want to be able to play recent (Pixel Shader style) games at a
reasonable rate then a 9600 Pro (AIW) will be about comparable in terms of
FPS.

I still say image quality is just as important as raw fps, but thats not a
debate I will to get into whilst cross-posting to both newsgroups. Ask in
the ATI group alone if you want that story.

Couldn't find a head-on test but here's one vs the Ti4600:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=1812

Just bear in mind that the AIW is not the same as your separate TV card.

Ben

 

[Chuck]

Just bear in mind that the AIW is not the same as your separate TV card.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. The AIW will combine my current graphic card and
my tv tuner all to one card/slot. That's my main goal, without spending too
much money or having a lesser quality graphics card. I thought I had heard
that the ti4800 was actually slower than the 4600, it just had 8X AGP
support built in. As previously mentioned, I'm perfectly happy with my
current card for the applications I do.

I appreciate your response, that's the type of information I was looking
for. I'm still confused as to which AIW I should be looking at. Although
certainly not as nice as the AIW 9800 Pro, it looks like the AIW 9600 Pro
would provide the same performance as my current card at 1/2 the cost of a
9800 Pro. But I'd hate to skimp on a few bucks and have a graphics card
that is worse than my current one just for the sake of a tv tuner
integration. I guess I'll keep on asking questions.

Thanks again, Ben.

 

[Malam]

I had a Pinnacle TV card and a Ti 4200 video card a few months ago and
was looking at upgrading just like you are. I eventually settled on
ATI AIW 9700 Pro. Its between the 9600 and the 9800 in video
performance but had the same tuner and video capture chip. The ATI
video capture chip is far superior to the ones on the separate TV
cards. You may want to target the 9600 or if you can find one , the
9700 Pro. The AIW is the top of the line and will cost you too much.

 

[Chuck]

I had a Pinnacle TV card and a Ti 4200 video card a few months ago and
was looking at upgrading just like you are. I eventually settled on
ATI AIW 9700 Pro. Its between the 9600 and the 9800 in video
performance but had the same tuner and video capture chip. The ATI
video capture chip is far superior to the ones on the separate TV
cards. You may want to target the 9600 or if you can find one , the
9700 Pro. The AIW is the top of the line and will cost you too much.

Thanks, Malam.

I see a lot of sales on eBay for all of the AIW line ( 9500-9800 Pro ). I
wasn't sure which one to target. I'll narrow down to the AIW 9700 Pro.
Thanks again.

 

[patrickp]

Thanks, Malam.

I see a lot of sales on eBay for all of the AIW line ( 9500-9800 Pro ). I
wasn't sure which one to target. I'll narrow down to the AIW 9700 Pro.
Thanks again.

Depending on what you want to do with the card, Chuck: if you don't
need the tuner, it can be worth looking for VIVO cards to save money.
They'll accept a video input and capture just as well as an AIW - but,
of course, you need an external tuner (eg cable/satellite box, VCR
etc).

If, like me, you've got a cable box which only outputs on one channel
anyway, there's no advantage to an AIW. One other advantage to VIVOs
is that they're not region specific: whereas AIWs will normally accept
either only NTSC input or only PAL and SECAM input, VIVOs will handle
the lot.

Depends on whether you need the tuner.

patrickp

(e-mail address removed) - take five to email me

 

[Ben Pope]

I appreciate your response, that's the type of information I was looking
for. I'm still confused as to which AIW I should be looking at. Although
certainly not as nice as the AIW 9800 Pro, it looks like the AIW 9600 Pro
would provide the same performance as my current card at 1/2 the cost of a
9800 Pro. But I'd hate to skimp on a few bucks and have a graphics card
that is worse than my current one just for the sake of a tv tuner
integration. I guess I'll keep on asking questions.

If you want to play Far Cry or other pixel shader intensive games, the 9600
is faster then the ti4800.

If you want to play Quake3 at 1024x768 without AA or AF, then the ti4800
will be faster.

Since I'm not posting the nVidia group and shouldn't get too flamed, the
nVidia ti4x00 range had a crap PS implementation, and crap AA implementation
so in PS type games the 9600 will outperform it, especially if you also want
AA/AF.

That type of response to you in the nVidia group would likely have incited
responses such as "The ti4800 is 100fps (50%) faster than the 9600 in
Quake3", which is probably true, but who needs more than 200fps? 2xAA on a
ti4x00 does nothing. 4x on an nVidia ti4x00 does the same as 2x on an ATI.
I think they have an "off by one bug"

My advice is to go for the 9600 IF you make use of pixel shader, or AA, or
AF.

If you do that, there may be a couple of games where you drop a frame or two
compared to the ti4800, but only if you're not using AA or AF or pixel
shader in that game.

Ben

 

[CapFusion]

Not even a nibble.

Can anyone tell me where I can find out which AIW is comparable to my

card?

IMO/E - I would say Ti4800 in the range of ATi 9800 class.

CapFusion,...

 

[Andrew]

IMO/E - I would say Ti4800 in the range of ATi 9800 class.

More like a 9600 or lower, the 9800 is way faster than a 4800.