ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro 128 MB 8X AGP Graphics Card

First off, the people that rated this card with 3 or more stars obviously have not used this card. Their reviews are a textbook review I have seen on many websites.Secondly, before I bought this card I doubted reviews saying, I never have a bad experience with drivers, so I bought it. It was fine for 2 weeks, I got the most "updated" drivers and my games (Doom 3, GTA Vice City, NFS: Underground, and many more worked great). Then the troubles began; my computer would freeze every 45 minutes or so, depending on how much load was on the card itself. So, TV watching was limited, gaming was out of the question, but DVDs actually played without the card quitting on me.Also free phone support is limited to 30 days after you buy it. Well, since I bought it from a private seller on Amazon who didn't get me the card until 31 days after I paid for it, the FREE phone support was useless.I knew I wasn't going to pay the 2.99 or 3.99 a minute charges for help, because they would just give me answers to general problems from a list that they have in front of them. Also, going to the website for help is pointless too. E-mailing ATI for support only gives you a response of (once again) general problems with certain situations that have nothing to do with your problems.I will only give this video card one good mark. The input connector for connecting a VCR to show VHS tapes on your monitor is great with no quality loss at all, the tv quality was pretty decent, and the one touch recording for tv programs was easy as well. I actually programmed the remote control so that I could even turn off my computer from my bed after watching tv or a dvd, just to make me that much lazier. For the people who gripe about having to update the tv listings every week, don't you get tv listings in the paper every Sunday? Enough said.Lastly, I broke down and bougt an ATI(I'm not against ATI, just the AIW 9800 pro)9550 AGP 256mb video card and a TV wonder pro that came with the video imput device so I still can watch VHS tapes on my computer. Those 2 items were cheaper than what I paid form the AIW and after leaving my computer running all day and watchng tv and doing the normal stuff I do on my computer, I have had no problems at all. Save your money and just buy the 2 cards separetely.Have a nice day!

Great card for it's time though it often over heats and the to small a fan doesn't help. Before AMD took over and they had good AMD chips. Fan stopped working and I put a better fan on it and it runs good. I still have this card and it work though it is too out of date now. At the time it ran World of Warcraft just fine.

Good product from ATI for my older but still strong computer. I also have a $ 2000 dollar card ( Matrox Pro ), but you do not see the difference and in analog mode it works as good or better.

If you want a real PVR option, don't buy this card. Buy the video card and TV card separately. I've had an AIW card for a year and wish I had spent a few extra bucks 11 months ago.Don't get me wrong. I have another computer equipped with a 9800 Pro without the AIW features. It's an excellent card. I'm still using the AIW card in this machine, but only as a video card, not as a TV tuner...and it works just fine.The idea behind a video capture card is that you can pause, rewind and record live TV. By far the best way to do this is to buy a separate video capture card with hardware encoding. This way, the card converts the video signal into a format that can be saved on your hard drive (mpeg2).Otherwise, your CPU must do the work. That's what ATI All-in-Wonder cards do. While ATI makes great video cards, integrated cards like the AIW cards rely on the CPU to do all the dirty work.Video is somewhat jerky when you have TIVO capabilities enabled (pause/rewind live TV). You'll notice it especially when watching sports -- because the card drops frames due to the heavy CPU load.Their TV software is pretty decent -- and actually has some pretty great features.But their guide software (Guide Plus+) leaves much to be desired. You have to manually iniate guide updates and it only downloads the guide a week at a time -- so you have to remember to update the guide. Other available packages download the guide automatically, daily, and two weeks at a time.I have an AMD Athlon 2600 CPU with 512 MB of RAM and two 80GB hard drives and I still encountered all these problems. I spent a year trying to get better performance and finally broke down and bought a card with hardware encoding (the Avermedia UltraTV 1500 MCE). I now have two 1500 MCE cards installed in the same machine...and the performance is still much better than the single AIW card. I can record one show and watch another, or record two shows. Still, pause/rewind live TV works flawlessly.The picture is better, the sound is better, TIVO capabilities work without compromising system performance or dropping frames. I started using Snapstream BeyondTV software to view and record shows and I couldn't be happier.In short, spend an extra $20 and skip the video/TV tuner combo cards and you'll be much happier in the long run.

Pros: Great video quality and supports older systems. This is a popular card for those that need a single-slot solution in an AGP system.Cons: Horrible cable, cost, outdated GPU. The cable is made with really thin sheet metal for the shroud and is heavy with thin, unprotected pins. DVI, VGA, and S-Video(SVHS) are practically indestructible in comparison. Even the lowest-end HD Radeon 5xxx cards are faster. Radeon HD 4670 is fastest ATI I know of that'll work in an AGP slot, BTW.Overall/Extra: If you have an AGP-based computer used for video work/security and for some reason don't want/can't upgrade to PCI-E, this is a good card to go with. It'll be hard to find one with the cable in working condition for less than $150. It's up to you, if you would prefer that over getting a newer board. If you have a newer computer, it's best to just get an HVR-1600 or 1800 even if your machine has both PCI and PCI-E since PCI-E tuner cards have a lot less latency issues than PCI cards. In a pinch, the Asus 210E could work. Just make sure you can get drivers for them _before_ ordering any TV tuner, regardless of model/slot.