Jedi Knight 2 @ 1024x768

Jedi Knight II is a little more CPU limited than video card limited (we'll see in a few moments), but make no mistake. A fast video card is required if you still want good framerates at high resolutions and all the effects turned on.

It's obvious here that at 1024, you're going to be CPU limited more than video.

Jedi Knight 2 @ 1280x1024

Looks like the same case for 1280 (CPU limited). If you squint though, the 9800 Pro holds a slight 1FPS lead once we turn on the AA and AF.

Jedi Knight 2 @ 1600x1200

At 1600, the work moves over to the video card, in which case the 9800 Pro easily wins this round over the FX5900. Look at the 27FPS difference at 4xAA/8xAF.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein @ 1024x768

Powered by the Quake 3 Engine, like Jedi Knight 2, it is heavily modified. We used the Checkpoint demo, which is loaded with explosions and multiplayer action.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein @ 1280x1024

Return to Castle Wolfenstein @ 1600x1200

We've seen these numbers in our FX5900 review. For whatever reason we haven't been able to nail down, the ATI based cards crush the nVidia cards at Wolfenstein. What makes this benchmark puzzling is it is the very same 3D engine as Jedi Knight 2.

Splinter Cell @ 1024

New to our test bench is UbiSoft's 3rd person action game, Splinter Cell. We used the Beyond3D demo, and ran the cards through the gamut.

Splinter Cell @ 1280x1024

At 1024 and 1280, the 9800 Pro wins decisively when AA/AF is turned off. It gets a lot closer once we turn those features on though, but the 9800 Pro hangs on to its lead.

Splinter Cell @ 1600x1200

We noticed a stange anomaly where our framerates were higher at 4xAA/8xAF than they were at 2xAA/8xAF, so we left those out. This was the case for both cards. Here we can see the 9800 Pro hold its lead.

SpecViewPerf7

Video cards aren't just for fun and games, and I'm sure some developers and multimedia authors are curious about how it would do in a professional OpenGL environment.

Scores were a little back and forth here. Other than the "drv" portion of the benchmark, the 9800 Pro indicates it is the stronger workstation card btween the two.

Image Quality

3D image quality was excellent, and on par with what the past ATI cards are capable of. If you want to see how some games would look, I invite you to checkout that review.

We loaded up a 1600x1200 image David and I normarlly use in our video card reviews. I also pulled up several word documents with various sized fonts to judge the text rendering. The documents used white text on a black background, and vice versa. The screen resolution for all tests was 1600x1200 @ 85Hz on a Dell rebranded 21" Trinitron.

Scores are subjective, but having worked with many video cards the last few years, I got a pretty firm grasp on what card renders 2D better than the others. The scores will be out of 10, with 10 being excellent.

All the ATI cards looked pretty much the same to me, but there is an obvious quality drop when moving to the MX440. The MX440 rendered white text on a dark background horribly, and in order not to lose my eyesight, I had to use the mouse to select blocks of text I wanted to read. The FX5900 was a little better, but it was still difficult reading that same white text.

TV-Out Quality

I grabbed an AVI file of Cradle to the Grave (captured from a satellite feed), and outputted it to CRT on the AiW 9800 Pro, the AiW 9700 Pro, the AiW 8500DV, and on the FX5900.

AiW 9800 Pro	AiW 9700 Pro	AiW 8500 DV	FX5900-VTD

There's nary a difference between the 9800 Pro and 9700 Pro. This isn't too surprising since both cards use the Theater 200 to help process and clean up the video. The 8500 DV isn't bad, but it has a slightly grainier image. The FX5900 on the otherhand is both grainy and dark. It isn't terrible, but the quality isn't up to the 9700/9800's levels.

Cobra Engine - TMPGEnc MPEG Encoding

Video editing is a taxing chore, which is why we choose to use it on motherboards to test performance. However, given the reported advantages of the Cobra Engine, we thought it'd be interesting to see if the AiW 9800 Pro would fare better than the FX5900. We'll using TMPGEnc 2.512 to encode a 101.56MB AVI file, 29.97FPS, 13:24 in length, to a 23FPS MPG file. Note that lower scores are better, and times are in seconds.

The AIW 9800 Pro is a good 13 seconds faster at encoding the file than the FX5900. This works out to about 2.5% faster, which isn't close to the maximum 20-25% ATI claims, but we may see a larger percentage with a larger MPG file.

Overclocking

With the rather smallish fan, and a clock frequency of 380MHz/340MHz, we didn't have high hopes for overclocking. We snagged the Rage3D Tweak for our overclocking needs, and proceeded to crank up the speeds. The core was done first, keeping the memory at 340MHz. From 380MHz, we topped off at 432MHz. At 433MHz, there was obvious image corruption, so we didn't go any higher.

The memory overclock was more problematic. With the core running at 380MHz, we were able to get as high as 371MHz, but in our UT2003 tests, we were dropping a lot of textures that were present at stock speeds. The problems went away at 369MHz, but whenever the resolution changed in the [H]ardOCP script, the system hung. At 368MHz, the system ran fine.

When we overclocked both the core and memory together, we settled for a 429/368 core and memory overclock. Since both items were being overclocked, we weren't able to run either component as high as we were able to when ran alone. What did this do for performance?

Splinter Cell, AIW OC'd @ 429/368

Not much of an improvement I must say. I know a couple framerates are important for a lot of our readers, so I'll leave it up to you to decide if the inherited risks involved in overclocking is worth the small boost in speed.

Final Words

ATI's latest entry into the All-In-Wonder family adds to that series legacy. The All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro is easily the fastest video card we've tested thus far, and includes the bells and whistles needed to differentiate it from being just another video card.

Low-resolution gaming is not what the 9800 Pro was built for. You'll want to up the resolution, and pump up the eye-candy, as this card can handle (most) of it. 3D image quality is excellent, and it will handle any action game currently on the shelf without breaking a sweat.

The AiW 9800 Pro isn't all play though. For casual video editors, the Theater 200 is a technological marvel, and improves greatly on the previous generation of the chip. The end result is a cleaner image, and additional items such as the Cobra Engine, and VideoSoap are welcome features for video editors. Even if you don't edit video, video and TV quality are improved over past AiW cards without the Theater 200. The Cobra Engine did give us a small boost in MPG encoding times as well.

The Remote Wonder works as it should, and if you are planning a PC-oriented home theatre setup, a remote is a must have, though it isn't the perfect mouse substitute.

Complaints? Sure, we have a couple. Like the AiW 9700 Pro, there is no way to setup Hydravision out of the box. Dual monitors are a must for graphic designers and multimedia authors, and there is no way to setup dual CRTs/LCDs in its current form. Considering the strong video capabilities, it is a shame ATI didn't include a FireWire connection. This isn't that big a deal as it would have been in 2001, as most motherboards worth their grain of salt already include this connection.

One debate we had in our video card forum was the value of the All-In-Wonder. Make no mistake… it isn't cheap. If you have a good gaming card, or you tend to change it often, it is more expensive to swap an AiW than it would to buy one add-on PCI TV-Tuner and multiple gaming cards. Our response is that the AiW 9800 Pro is only … more expensive than the vanilla 9800 Pro. A decent TV-Tuner will hover in the 100$ range. Add the Remote Wonder, free software, and hardware features such as the Theater 200 (and the improved image quality), I think it tips things in the All-In-Wonder's favour.

Another debate was about the idea of using an All-In-Wonder card in a multimedia PC in favour of a dedicated TiVo. In my opinion, a multimedia PC can do a heck of a lot more than a TiVo, such as play MP3s, AVIs, surfing the net, and playing games. Another advantage the AiW has in this situation is that the Guide+ software does not require a subscription for its services.

The All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro is the best-rounded card in ATI's current line-up, let alone anybody's line-up. You can debate until the cows come home whether the Radeon 9800 Pro or the nVidia FX 5900 Ultra is the faster technology, but there's no question that the 9800 Pro is a heck of a performer. Add all the fun stuff that comes with the All-In-Wonder, and you truly have a card that can do it all.

Pros: Great gaming performance, excellent 2D and 3D image quality, TV-Tuner, cables and remote included.

Cons: Expensive, no out of the box dual monitor support.

Bottom Line: One of the fastest cards on the market, it is all so the most feature rich. If you're looking for the perfect video card, you'll be hard pressed to find one better than this.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.