AIW x1800XL PCIE vs. ATI 7500 VE PCI vs. 128 PCI?
 

Any reason why I would want to purchase a 7500 VE PCI over a X1800 PCIE?

With the exception of the PCIE - PCI difference. And of the form factor. Both are not a concern for me.

I also saw a AIW 128 PCI. Should I purchase this over the X1800 PCIE?

Obviously, my main concern is video transfer, and I do not have any Macromedia protected tapes.

Appreciate it.

P.S. I cannot purchase AGP cards, as I do not have AGP slots in any of my motherboards.

Hi Dana2
I am new newby here and am putting together an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express XP machine together after getting unacceptable results on an usb based Dazzle (Win XP) and an usb based Honestech (win 7) converter. The Idea is to convert VHS tapes. Dont Have an opinion on this card yet as I Haven't received it yet from EBAY as well as the ATI Purple Adapter which I ordered also from EBAY. I can say that It doesnt cost much to experiment with the card as my cost was less than 25 dollars shipped for both card and adapter.
I will share my results in a week or two. Scott

A side note and maybe a little bit humorous about the software based encoding Dazzle usb converter is that after recording 1 movie, while playing back the movie on the Windows XP 32 bit computer I for the first time ever burned out (overheated) the cpu of the PC. It is a INTEL CELERON D 331 2.66GHZ 533MHZ. I put another used CPU back in and the machine is running again. Yes I had quite a bit of dust on the heat sink (contributing factor) which I washed off in the kitchen sink before restoring. OH an To the Forum. Nice to meet you and Thank You for allowing me to join!

Thanks Scott.

Anybody else having an opinion?

704/720

The cards, or rather the drivers, behave differently.

You have to understand the hardware. Offhand, I forget the exact number, but the Theatre chipsets capture at about 710x480. Realize that analog isn't measured in pixels. The ATI card resizes in the chip to 704x480, and then the driver interprets it into 704x480 (352=50%) or 720x480 ... or whatever else (and those numbers don't matter here for this conversation).

The PCI and AGP cards all send 704, and the drivers center it when captured 720 (in a matte to retain proper aspect), and then MMC (when used) sometimes decides that 720 isn't allowed.

The PCIe cards all left justify it, and you're left with a large right matte for 720. It's in the overscan, but you may notice it on certain types of content. It's looks perfect at 704 and 640.

However, it gets more interesting.

The PCIe cards show the entire frame of video, from edge to edge (left/right, not top/bottom). There are some PCIe drivers that center, but then MMC won't work, and it simply crops. So you're not getting 100% edges -- though it usually does not matter, as it's a small crop.

The AGP and PCI depends on driver -- there were many -- but it usually centers, within a pixel of the image boundary.

The PCIe cards also have a nuisance of recording 720x960 in MMC, because of the good drivers. You have to hack the registry to allows make it x480. The registry setting of "480" is x960, and "240" is the correct 480. it's some sort of goof on the part of ATI, right before AMD bought it, and that was never fixed. It's random, and you may not see it.

I prefer the AGP cards.

Don't mistake this as saying PCIe is bad, or PCI good. Just different. Both give excellent results. :)

I never tested PAL x5756/x288 for these minor differences, but it's probably the same.

Heat

The PCIe cards run hotter and stock heatsink fan is noisy. They run best (and quiet!) when that crappy heatsink is removed, and replaced with the Zalman VF700-CU. Under $35 here: https://www.amazon.com/Zalman-VF700-...227aef188f2159

(Note: The 2006 PCIe doesn't work with that Zalman. But you can mod it with then run a case fan across the heatsink. I just finished building a system like that. It works well.)

The PCI and AGP cards mostly don't have fans. And when they don't, I just unplug them. The heatsink alone is adequate for those cards. It barely gets warm after a day of use.

MMC

AGP and PCI use ATI MMC 7 through 9.0x. The PCIe cards use 9.1x, and that's it. After 9.1x, the AIW series ended. MMC 9.1x doesn't report dropped frames, which can be important. It's also very finicky, requiring registry hacks to work correctly. The hardware-only MPEG is blocky, while the "software" (actually hybrid software/hardware) is the classic high-quality ATI MMC MPEG capturing.

When using the AGP cards, MMC 8 is best, specially 8.7 to 8.9, which all allow VideoSoap. And Sometimes VS is useful. Tip: If an MMC version won't allow 720 with your card, just try another one (8.7 to 9.0x). Most DVD authoring software will not allow 704, and BD spec is 720 only for SD.

128

You don't want these. Most of the 128 cards are not Theatre, pre-Radeon, and use ATI MMC 6-7. Only the "128 Pro" uses Theatre chips, but has to be hacked to use ATI MMC 8. You don't want MMC 6-7, as it has problems.

I forget if the 128 Pro is considered a Radeon.

Thank you LordSmurf for a VERY detailed explanation. Do you happen to know if all the required connectors were included with these cards? (input and output) Or one had to buy them separately.

I received my All-In-Wonder Radeon X1800 and my input breakout box yesterday. I believe the card is a non 2006 model. It has two DVI (both output?) connectors and a 9 pin DIN female input. The purple breakout box male 9 pin DIN fit snugly and did not create a bent pin condition when I tested it.

Started loading Windows XP Home Edition 32 bit on the following components that were purchased new in Jan of 2013

Mobo. MSI A75A-G35 FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX AMD with UEFI BIOS
among others it has 2 PCIE slots (x16, x4)

Processor. AMD A6-3650 Llano Quad-Core 2.6 GHz Socket FM1 100W

Ram. Transcend JetRam 8GB total (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop

Error right away on software installation. I pull one stick of ram out and reboot. This time it loads further but end up with "blue screen error "IRQL not less or equal" during final stages of installation. I think still too much ram (4 GB) for windows XP, I ordered G.SKILL NS 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory.

When I receive my latest shipment I will try again with the smaller (2gB) RAM.

Scott

The C1800 sounds OK, but if you're installing XP Service Pack 1 you need Service Pak 2 for PCIe. If you have an SP1 XP disc, you can use nLite software to slipstream Service Pack 2 into the XP install on a new boot CD. Takes just a few minutes, but it's pretty straightforward with nLite. My XP was installed with an nLite CD the same way. Here are two links with the same problems, with links to the software that can make the fixed boot disc:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23...l-intel-dp35dp
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24..._less_or_equal

I always hated building new capture systems. I'm hopefully done with it. I built 3 systems this year, using up all my spare hardware. There were many hardware and driver issues along the way. (One is my new backup, and I'm selling the other pair. One is already sold, and I'll be putting the last one up for sale this month or next month.)

Tip: Don't add more than 4gb RAM to Windows XP, and preferably just 2gb. More RAM will just piss it off.

I really think you're already pushing your luck. For a capture box, that hardware is overkill. The sweet spot for ATI AIW hardware is 2005-2010, either single- or dual-core, preferably Intel or non-single AMD. Your setup looks to be from around 2012. The newer hardware gets, the more likely it will have Windows XP driver issues.

XP 32 won't recognize more than 3 GB of RAM. I have a triple boot system, with 32 GB of RAM. I do not have any problems booting it in Windows XP, 32 bit.

XP can use 3.25, 3.5, or 3.75. I've never understood why it varies like that. Must be hardware related.
I have a 4gb setup here that sees 3.25gb.

And it usually won't use more than 2gb anyway. The rest is idle.

Yes, indeed it is hardware related :) Maximum addressable space on a 32 bit operating system is 4 gb. That means that using 32 bit combinations of ones and zeros, one cannot identify with precision more than 4 gb distinct locations.

We must remember that the system must reserve addressable space for its hardware as well. I.e. if you have a graphics card with 512 mb internal memory, then addressable space must be reserved for those 512mb :)

But then, the computer must reserve address space for its BIOS, for interrupts, etc.

Whatever remains, the computer will use it to address RAM locations.

I received my shipment of new 2GB ram yesterday. Sure enough, It did not make any difference in the loading process (Still got "IRQL not less or equal" error message that i got with 4GB ram).

This morning the box was loaded with (newly created by nlite) slipstreamed XP home SP1/SP2 CD. I did not have to Select F6 during the install to add drivers even though my optical drive and Kingston solid state hard drive are both SATA. I dont know if BIOS is providing the SATA interface or maybe SP2 has drivers for them.

So All is good. Thanks Lordsmurf and Dana2 for your assistance. nlite is a cool tool !

A note about nlite. I first installed nlite on my windows 10 pro HP Elitebook core I5 laptop thinking to make the disk, couldn't get it to work for windows XP. The GUI is quite different from the tutorials I found online.

I installed nlite to a Windows 7 (pro) desktop and It worked there to make a the slipstream Windows XP/SP2 CD. The user interface matches more closely the online tutorials I found.

When downloading the installer from the same link it seemed a different instance of nlite materializes for win 10 than it does for win 7.

I put windows 3.1 installer onboard and then Net Framework 2.0.

Waiting for a DVI to VGA adapter that is on order to actually test the card, meanwhile I am going to load the ATI software for the card and see what it looks like.

Scott

Most motherboards won't support XP in SATA drive mode, set IDE mode for that in our BIOS. If the system is working, then apparently this was done by default.

The AIW X1800XL PCIe card does something the AGP cards don't, namely capture audio directly from the card's input jacks. You don't have to use your sound card for audio and worry about sync problems.

It really depends on age. Anything pre-2008 is not likely. After 2008, it's probably 50/50 odds.
I just built 4 capture systems: 3 have AHCI (native SATA), 1 refuses.

This is not accurate. More accurately, somehow I got NTlite on my Win 10 pro laptop. The slipstream tool that worked on my windows 7 desktop is Nlite 1.4.9.3. I have made also an xp pro sp2 slipstream cd now which I get similar results as far as ATI software.

Using the same hardware setup as I described in post #6 except with 2 GB ram after a fresh win xp install I perform the following.

Install windows software update installer 3.1 KB893803 required to install .NET Framework 2.0 (available from microsoft website)}

Install .NET Framework 2.0 service pack 1 (available from microsoft website)

Create a file on the desktop name it direct x 9.0, extract DirectX 9.0c Redistributable to that file, open the file and run setup. The Direct X Runtime install says it may there take a few minutes but finishes almost instantaneously so I am suspect it is not doing anything.

From Support at AMD.com I download and install in the following order per instructions
1 DAO/MDAC 2 Encoder Package 3 Multimedia Center

Alternatively I have also tried on a fresh windows xp install using the drivers from this website at " ATI All In Wonder Hacks, Drivers, Codecs and MMC" page 3, post #48.

Application wise "I am getting a working Catalyst Control Center which seems to provide display drivers as well as a video format converter. What I do not get is the MMC to use for capture.

Here is what is showing up in the Add or Remove Programs
ATI AVIVO Codecs from ATI Technologies version 10.0.0.40103
ATI Catalyst control Center version 2.010.0210.2338
ATI Display Driver version 8.593.100-100210a-095952E-ATI
ATI Parental Control & Encoder ATI Technologies In. version 3.0
DAO version 3.5.
Titan TV client 1.0.6,
USB video driver version 1.00 from EETI,
Windows Driver package from eMPIA Technology (emAudio) version 08/31/2007 5.7.0831.0,
Windows Driver Package Advanced Micro device, Inc (USB28xxBGA) Media version 08/31/2007 5.70831.0
Windows Media Encoder 9 series

Here is what Catalyst Contyrol Center is telling me about my AIW card.
Primary Adapter
Graphics Card Manufacturer Built by ATI
Graphics Chipset Radeon X1800 GTO
Device ID 710A
Vendor 1002

Subsystem ID 0B12
Subsystem Vendor ID 1002

Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express x16

BIOS Version 009.012.004.002
BIOS Part Number 113-A52003-104
BIOS Date 2006/03/14

Memory Size 256 MB
Memory Type DDR3

Core Clock in MHz 500 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 495 MHz

My Apologies for the long post. my Question is does anyone see what I am missing, doing out of order and/or doing wrong? Thanks Scott

-- merged --

I forgot some information which I will add. At http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/archive/mmc9-16 I have been downloading files that I think should result in Multimedia Center 9.16. The files that I have downloaded and tried from this site at " ATI All In Wonder Hacks, Drivers, Codecs and MMC" page 3, post #48 I believe also should result in Multimedia Center 9.16. I can try another version of MMC also if if may work better.

Hi All

I have been thrashing the MSI A75A-G35 type motherboard computer with operating system ( windows XP pro sp2) fresh installs. After loading software for my AIW X1800 video capture card in several sequences and combinations. Here is what I have found. The card is working for display and the computer sees the capture portion of the card.

Even though I still cant get a AIW capture application to run, I can capture video through my X1800 card through Windows Movie Maker. I input video from a VCR to the composite input of the purple AV INPUT ADAPTER but Movie Maker doesnt see the video there. When I select SVideo in Movie Maker I get video but without color.:hmm: The Audio I have to route through the one of the mobo onboard audio inputs to get sound.

I installed Pinnacle Studio 10.5 and can also capture there also albeit with the backwards composite/SVideo setting and no color.


The next thing to try is an SVideo source- dont think I have one.

Yes I know a little pathetic,:o I am using a little barebones VCR, a Sony SLV-N55 which for a cheapo does very well.


Is there another standalone version of MMC that I should try? I have tried 9.14 and 9.16 to no avail. That and trying a SVideo input will point to whether my card has a problem with spitting out color or not.

Thanks in advance for comments

Scott

Sorry you're having problems with MMC. It would take some system analysis to solve the problem. All AIW cards require that you remove your previous graphics card and its software before installing an AIW card. Di you do that?

Meanwhile...

Wiindowds Movie Maker is junkware next to the X1800. Don't use it.

Pinnacle? Ouch! No surprise there. Don't use that, either.

S-video is cleaner input, and you need a better VCR. But for now, why haven't you tried capturing with VirtualDub? I thought that was supposed to be the best idea in the first place. AIW's and VirtualDub are the most popular cards and software for lossless capture. Most AIW users don't even install MMC. There is no standalone version of MMC -- you have to install it with the Catalyst software package.

Very detailed setup guide and everything you need to know for VirtualDub capture with an AIW card:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...-settings.html

The ATI 1800 Setup and User's Guide is attached.

Thanks sanlyn for the reply. I will try Virtualdub:smack:


Conceded, A better one may be in the cards. With more ability on my part a good VCR would be justified.:D

For the time being used what you have.

You can get S-viddeo input by connecting your composite video cable to the ES15, then use the ES15's s-video output to your capture card. The ES15 has builtin y/c comb filter to help clean up composite source.

Setting up a fully-working AIW system is not always an easy task. In fact, it rarely is.
Right now, I have two systems in the marketplace: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/mark...ti-wonder.html

Sanlyn

Thanks for going to the trouble of attaching the PDF guide for the AIW X1800 series cards. I read it carefully and especially took note about verifying load of PCIE drivers and removing prior display drivers. I had already done that.
I note some differences between the card pictured in the PDF guide and my XL1800 GTO Card. My card has (2) DVI output connectors and (1) F type jack RF in receptacle and (1) DIN style ATI proprietary purple AV input adapter jack (same as I use on my ATI All in Wonder 9600 card on another machine). The one pictured has (1) DVI output receptacle and (2) F type jack RF inputs as well as uses a SCART style adapter.

Searching the internet I found this statement regarding the X1800GTO from a website called Legit reviews dated 2006.

{Instead ATI took their R520 core and did a number of modifications to the card to cut back performance and the price tag. With an MSRP of $249, the X1800 GTO is essentially a modified Radeon X1800 XL GPU with fewer pipelines and ROPs. Here, we see a slight decrease from 16 pipelines down to 12 as well as a drop in Raster Operator Units (ROPs) from 16 to 8. Other than these changes the X1800 GTO retains all the features and functionality of the full Radeon X1800 series of GPU’s}

I will try some earlier capture drivers to try to get the composite/SVideo swap and color to work right, also maybe I am using the wrong AV input adapter jack. Any guess as to which specific capture drivers/codecs I might try for ATI T200 Unified AVStream Driver. I think my display drivers are not a problem would like to try using just a minimum of drivers from ATI then use Virtual Dub on this machine for capture.

I did capture now with VirtualDub with same results of black and white capture from a color tape and had to select SVideo in VD to see my composite input. Good thing to get acquainted with and practice with VirtualDub so progress me thinks. :salute: Your VirtualDub guide is outstanding!!

I bought an SVHS VCR yea its an eBay machine so It might be stupid on my part but as I did repair VCRs and TV's (including tube tv's) back around 79-83 it gives me maybe too much confidence in taking on something like this. its a JVC HR-S2901U and its supposed to work great.:laugh: laughing hysterically

The DV functionality of that capture card sucks. You should be using analog s-video (or composite, if you don't have s-video on your player) from the purple dongle. You shouldn't be capturing analog to DV anyway. Properly, DV is never captured. It's copied with a DV transfer device and Firewire connection. Use Virtualdub's capture utility and capture to losslessly compressed AVI using huffyuv or Lagarith and a YUY2 colorspace setup in VirtualDub. Huffyuv is the preferred capture codec for more efficient CPU usage.

If you're connecting your ES15 to the dongle via the ES15's s-video output, then obviously your input as far as the card is concerned is s-video.

VirtualDub capture will use ATI's capture drivers if selecting the XL1800 as your capture device.

lordsmurf

I acknowledge that this is certainly a good deal for someone who wants to get into capture.:rockon:

I have certainly wasted more value in time (days worth of time) just setting up my two capture systems that I would have expended purchasing working systems such as you mention.One capture system is working, an AIW 9600 capture system in a PC with an AGP slot.

The next thing I likely will need is a TBC Let me correct that the next thing I need is to get a little smarter :Dabout capture. Your posts here at this site are a good read. I would absolutely have no qualms buying hardware from you.

Frankly I'd prefer the 9600. Mine is a 9600XT (pretty much the same card) and an AIW 7500 AGP. I see a lot of complaints from users of the X1800 series, usually setup hassles. I saw absolutely no improvement with PCIe cards, but somehow PCIe setup became more difficult.

The initial learning curve about capture can confound many users. I had a trip around that curve myself, but it soon became so routine it was boring. Video capture is really a different world. Let us know how it's going.

Update
dana2, lordsmurf and sanlyn

I have put aside the All-In-Wonder Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express All-In-Wonder Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB card for now. The build was a failure:eek:. Thanks for the help though:). Moving on to an 7500 AGP machine intended for direct MPEG-2 capture using the l.S guide. I will start a new thread re that card and MPEG video wizard after I get some practice. See you in the new year!