ATI has been at the forefront of multimedia applications for their video cards for years. The first “All-In-Wonder” video card was released way back in 1996 with the ability to play TV on the PC. Since then ATI has released many AIW products until the release of the AIW X1900 their last AIW card in 2006. The gap of two years has seen the release of many video chip families including the HD2xxx, HD3xxx and the HD4xxx families of video cards.
One of the problems with designing their AIW line of VGA cards is that they are generally six months behind the family launch, so that a new chip is released before the AIW would normally be ready to release. This is one of the reasons why ATI has stayed out of the AIW release for the last two years as no less than three different chip families have been released since the X1900 and was four generations ago, if you count the X1950XTX cards. ATI announced the AIW HD on June 26 and today that is the card on the test bench for us to see how well it works and why it’s a viable product.
