Radeon All-In-Wonder 7500 vs. 8500

dave48

Established Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2002
Messages
419
Reaction score
89
Points
159
Location
Germany
My video has just blown up so now I have no video. More fundamentally, there has been a problem with my TV tuner, so I was using the Video as a tuner. So I now have no TV as well as no video.

Since I don't want to buy a new TV at the moment - and I'm not sure I need a new vid really, since I was using it 80% as a tuner and 20% to record stuff, I was thinking of following a different route, namely setting up a home cinema PC.

The graphics cards I have been looking at primarily are the ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 7500 and All-In-Wonder 8500. These seem to offer just about everything I could possibly need in a single card.

Firstly, does anyone have any experience of using these cards? Are they any good, or just a jack-of-all-trades?

Secondly, is it worth shelling out the extra cash for the 8500? The DV input on this is completely irrelevant for me at the moment - I'm more interested in getting best possible quality of TV tuner, video recording and DVD playback. Good games performance is a factor, but probably not enough to justify the entire price difference.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Dave48
 
bump ...

Anyone have an opinion on these cards? Would I be seriously compromising DVD playback by going for one of these vs. a normal Radeon? And is the TV tuner / video input decent quality?
 
I've not seen the quality so cant really comment on that but you also need to consider if you're going to use DScaler in your HCPC, DScaler doesn't work with the AIW cards.

I've got a Radeon 7500 and a Pinnacle Rave and the PQ is pretty good using DScaler 4 for SKY and Video, I've not tried using the tuner as my reception is poor at the best of times anyway!

Sorry not helped much but you need to look at your ultimate goal.

Steve
 
Excuse me being thick, but what does DScaler actually do? I don't have Sky or anything like that - the only inputs I will have are normal TV coax and S-video in from my AV amp. Outputs will be to PC screen and TV via S-video.

Dave48
 
DScaler is essentially a freeware de-interlacing program, and very good it is too!! It captures video processes it then scales it to PC Monitor or projector.

Checkout it out here

Steve
 
Hi,

I've used both cards and have had other "All-In-Wonder" cards and a couple of Radeon 8500's in the past. They are very good, yes (I currently have the 7500 version). The level of integration is awesome and the accompanying software isn't bad either.

The I/O on both cards is very similar - both use the Rage Theater chip for capture and I presume they use similar filters, RAMDACs and TV tuner (although the 8500DV uses a digital tuner compared to the analog unit of the AIW 128MB or 7500 AIW). The 7500 has dual integrated RAMDACs while the 8500 uses an off-die DAC stage for it's second display, but certainly there is no massive difference in image quality between the cards on either of the outputs. They have comparable iDCT-assist/motion comp/scale/descale capabilities so for DVD playback will be pretty much identical. To all intents and purposes they are very similar if you are not heavily into gaming, need IEEE1394 or YPrPb ouput.

Having said that, with the recent price drops in the 8500DV (about £160 now I think) it's definitely worth the small extra cost for the gaming boost and the option of adding the component output dongle at a later date. While you can get the AIW 7500 for as little as £110, OEM, once you add the cost of the remote control (definitely worth it!) etc to that then it's getting pretty close to the price of the 8500DV retail bundle anyway. :)

MuFu.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom