Most powerful computer that can use ATI AIW Radeon?

[Zeta83]

I have an All-In-Wonder Radeon that I want to use to capture Hi8 tapes (which I will be playing from a Hi8 camera).

I'm going to need an old computer to use the AIW.
What is the most powerful/modern computer I can use to run one of these?
I figure I might as well make sure the computer's processing and file transferring interfaces are as fast and modern as the AIW will allow, since it (mostly) doesn't cost that much to get old computer parts and I don't want to spend more time than necessary on processing, or on transferring files to other devices.

Names of specific computer models, or, types of CPUs and motherboards (etc.) that can be used would be helpful.

[lordsmurf]

If you use a certain rare PCI AIW, then you can use any PCI enabled board that has XP drivers. That gets you into 2014 or so, which is not too shabby in terms of available CPUs.

This OS is the issue, a modern XP is needed.

You'll have to slipstream in the correct drivers, and it can be a PITA. XP Integral edition (unofficial XP) supposedly has backports/drivers/etc for nifty features (more RAM, USB3, GPT, etc), but it's too barebones to be useful. They stupidly insisted the ISO be under 700mb, so it has sparse included drivers. DriverPacks seems impossible to download now, and I'm not having any luck with my latest install (yet). I'll fart around with nLite later, too busy for now.

The CPU allowed is 100% dependent on the motherboard, and you need those PCI slots. So that's your task: find the most recent board with both PCI and XP drivers.

[pcourtney]

you simply don't need a fast modern computer for SD capture - you just need to run Windows XP with 2 or 3GB of ram, and a motherboard that sports one of the latest Pentium 4 CPU's, you install the OS on the C:\ drive, you can use an Intel SSD drive (as I dom contrary to what others might advise) , but this bit is important, it must be an Intel Pentium CPU and an Intel SSD drive - later than G2

SSD's work a bit differently to HDD's, all SSD's need to be informed which files are no longer valid (deleted/obsolete) so those blocks can be made available again at a later date by being reset to the SSD's notion of empty/available.

The SSD TRIM command was created to pass that information to Windows 7 (which was the first OS to send TRIM commands to SSD's) , sadly Windows XP has not been updated to send TRIM commands - and never will !

However, the Intel SSD Toolbox was created to send TRIM commands to Intel SSD's and when that function is invoked from the Intel Toolbox application after a lot of VHS SD capture, or any intensive use of the C:\ drive, it resets all those blocks and the drive is back to 100% health again

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/...d-storage.html

lots of good info on MSFN below

https://msfn.org/board/topic/173482-...y-trim-an-ssd/

NB you don't capture SD video to your C:\ drive, but to a dedicated 2TB SATA drive, that you can remove from the desktop computer and then insert it into a much faster computer and any OS you like to do the post processing of the video !

I capture a VHS tape to my Win XP Dell 8300 computer and whilst keeping an eye on it - I am on the other computer where I use Vegas Pro 17 Lifetime Editionm that runs really nicely on a very fast Windows 10 64 bit machine with 32GB ram (which is recommended for 4K - but you only need 8GB for VHS )

This works for me, but I have hundreds of tapes to capture, and when I'm done I will keep the fast machine and sell the Dell 8300 with my ATI X800 AGP8x All In Wonder card to the next person who wants to use it for capture !

[BW37]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeta83

I have an All-In-Wonder Radeon

What model AIW Radeon do you have? They came in 3 different interfaces. PCI, AGP or PCIe. If it's an AGP interface card then certain PC's or motherboards will work. If it's a PCI or PCIe card, there more options including more modern ones which can include features like SATA2 which is a minor advantage.

But as pcourtney has said, capture alone can be done with a pretty modest computer. Raw CPU or GPU power isn't needed. The capture files are then moved to a more powerful PC for further processing, restoration, encoding, etc.

BW

[lordsmurf]

SATA2 and dual-core Intel CPUs are a major advantage for AIW systems.
- The SATA allows more/longer captures, faster transfers off-system, and less likely to drop frames.
- The dual-core Intel allows 15-20mbit MPEG captures without dropped frames

I've not been a major proponent of single-core P4 IDE systems for years now. I won't even build such a lowly system anymore. I built my last P4/Athlon system about 11 years ago (and sold it about 6 years ago, built myself the better SATA system). My final Athlon AIW system literally melted itself, I woke up to a PSU, motherboard, and AIW that was scorched and gooey back in 2014. (I've never liked AMD CPUs, they run too hot, and the available motherboards are always crappier than Intel compatibles. But it was my only real choice at the time it was built.)

I'm all for "more power" ATI AIW systems (Tim Taylor?), as it can make the systems useful beyond capturing (authoring, encoding, restoring). Just know that not everybody wants or needs a capture box to do more than purely capture. My own beefier AIW systems are where I also restore audio, encode MPEG, author DVDs, and do some basic Avisynth -- but as overflow to my main video system (more, faster).