ATI AIW RADEON 8500 DV advantages?

[KBON]

Hi!

I'm gonna buy a new graphic card for my system (right now, I have a GeForce2 GTS-32mb with tv-out on a P3 1ghz, 160GB HD, 384MB RAM), and I wanna go for an ATI this time.
In the near future, I'm gonna edit self-recorded movies, and I both analog and digital inputs on my pc.
After googl'ing for a while, I found an ATI All In Wonder RADEON 8500 DV card. It has everything I need, but I find it too expensive (here in Europe it costs more than 350$).

An other option for me would be to buy a HERCULES All in Wonder Radeon 9000PRO with analog inputs for 200$ and add an inexpensive Firewire card. The overall cost would be a lot cheaper to me, and I think the 9000 will be a little better at 3D (wich I don't use anyway, but it could be an advantage, you never know where you'll end up)

Would this combination have any disadvantages above using an all-in-one card like the 8500 DV except that I also occupy a PCI slot for the firewire card?
With disadvantages, I mean things like transfer speed, quality,...
I read that the 8500DV doesn't have a hardware MPEG encoder, so I don't think that it could give me any advantage.

What would you do, and why?

Thanks in advance,
KBON

 

[cleeve]

The 9000 PRO with a separate firewire card will be fine.

The difference in 3d Performance will be neglegable. The 9000 is clocked higher but the 8500 is a slightly better GPU.

As far as I know, the only advantage the 8500 DV would offer is convenience of not having a separate firewire card. I think both come with the wireless remote.

I think the 9000 enables you to use the Fullstream and Videosoap features, as well, which is a kind of hardware video acceleration I believe. But those features are neglegable.

Just find the best price, you'll see an immediate improvement over your Geforce2.

Good luck,

- Cleeve

 

[Crashman]

I'll sell you an AIW 8500DV for $200 plus shipping (around $30 to Europe). Since "you're my cousin" and it's your birthday, I'll lable the package as a gift.

BTW, all recent AIW cards have "hardware assisted" MPEG compression, which takes much of the load off the CPU.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[phial]

generally the 8500 is slightly faster, but in 2D apps you wont notice a difference. and fullstream is supported on the 8500

ATI is superior to Nvidia for 2D quality. period
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"You change the channel, and you change our minds..." - System of a Down<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phial on 04/29/03 02:57 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[cleeve]

Are you sure about fullstream on the 8500?

I thought the 8500 supported "video immersion" DVD playback acceleration, but "Fullstream" was only enabled in 9XXX series drivers.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

You are correct, fullstream/video-smoothing has only been introduced to the 9000+ cards. The only way to get the 8500s to use fullstream is to flash them to 9100s, and that is not possible with a AIW8500 card, there is no 9100AIW.

The question is whether you will be viewing alot of AVIs, Mpegs, and other streaming video formats. Otherwise if it's mainly for TV, DVD, and such it won't make much of a difference.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! <font color=red>RED</font color=red> <font color=green>GREEN</font color=green> :tongue: GA to SK

 

[KBON]

Thanks to all of you for the extremely useful replies!

I think I'm going for the 9000-combination.
It gives me a lot more flexibility, for instance, I can upgrade my graphic card without having to buy a seperate FireWire thingie and stuff like that.
Also, I found nice cheap 9000's, and I'm adding a Pinnacle StudioDV Plus to it. It has Firewire in/out and S-Video-out, as well as a MPEG2 encoder. The total costs aren't more then I expected to spend, so I guess that's the right choise for me. Hardware MPEG encoding is always an advantage, and certainely when it comes to editing video. Too bad my wallet can't offer me a sweet XVID coder card (if it'd exist, that is).

Crashman, thanks for the offer, but I realise my 9000 + StudioDV+ setup is offering me a lot more advantages for about the same price, plus, I've got a warranty 😉.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by kbon on 04/29/03 02:14 PM.</EM></FONT></P>