Sapphire Atlantis AIW 9800 Pro

ATI's multimedia All-In-Wonder (AIW) range is one of the company's most successful, with over 3 million units sold. The latest in the stable is the All-In-Wonder Radeon 9800 Pro, based on the top-of-the-range 3D graphics chipset.

The model we looked at is the latest card from the prolific Sapphire Technology. The new card is very much like the standard 9800 Pro, but very slightly smaller, with the obvious additions of the TV tuner and codec chips. Also changed is the power connector - back to the floppy drive-style connector of the 9700 series.

The GPU cooler has been redesigned to make room for the Philips TV tuner, which is stereo enabled and has a 125-channel capability. The rear of the board holds the ATI Theatre 200 chip. This controls analogue video decoding and digital audio processing, outputting the digital feed for the Radeon chip to process while outputting audio to be processed by a digital decoder. It accepts PAL, NTSC and SECAM video inputs using composite, S-VHS and component video input. The Theatre 200 can also deal with NICAM, Dual FM, EIA-J and BTSC broadcast stereo formats.

The backplate loses the standard VGA port of the 9800 Pro, retaining the DVI-I and S-Video output and adding video input and UHF aerial ports. This loss of dual display capability is one of the card's few drawbacks.

The box contains a whole host of goodies - there's an RF remote control with a USB Remote Receiver, DVI-I to VGA adapter, Video/Audio Input block, a component video output dongle, single digital audio output and stereo output connectors, an output dongle with connectors for S-Video out, mic, digital audio out and composite video. There are also composite video and S-Video cables.

Bundled with the card are the latest version (8.5) of ATI's Multimedia Center, Pinnacle Studio 8, Matchware Mediator and Morrowwind - The Elder Scrolls.

Contact: Sapphire Technology (01793) 423830
www.sapphiretech.com

See also:

Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra TDH MyVIVO Edition

GeForce FX 5950 graphics card.  21 Nov 2003

Hercules 9800 XT

The fastest card we've ever seen.  20 Nov 2003

Crucial ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

A top of the range graphics card from Crucial.  30 Oct 2003

ASUS V9560 VS

A new graphics card from ASUS but is it any different from other cards on the market?  16 Oct 2003

Sapphire Atlantis 9600

A speedy, good value DirectX 9 card.  29 Sep 2003

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