Board analysis

While the new silicon tuner is considerably smaller than previous Philips tuners ATI has used in the past, it still takes up a considerable amount of room on the AIW X1800 XL’s PCB. In order to make room for the new tuner, ATI had to design a completely new PCB, which is much larger than the X1800 XL’s. In fact, it’s even bigger than the X1800 XT 512MB!



Measuring just shy of 10 inches long, the new ALL-IN-WONDER X1800 XL’s PCB is the longest we’ve ever seen on a graphics card, and may have a hard time fitting inside some small form factor systems. The PCB itself is a very dark shade of purple, nearly black actually, while the TV tuner is decked out with a gold-plated tuner can, with the MT2121 chip underneath. Immediately to the left of the tuner can lies connections for TV and FM tuning, while ATI’s proprietary I/O connector sits just beneath that. Finally, the board is finished off with a DVI connector, which can be used for hooking the card up to a LCD panel.

It’s ATI’s unique I/O connector that you’ll probably be most interested in. With this connection, ATI provides dual display capability (with the second display output being VGA only) as well as video input and output capabilities; this includes the ability to output to a conventional TV or even an HDTV. To accomplish these tasks, ATI provides external video dongles. These dongles look just like dominoes and can be stacked on top of each other just like Legos to help save space.


Inside the AIW X1800 XL’s packaging you’ll find three dongles. The input dongle provides 1 S-Video connection, 1 composite, and 2 RCA stereo audio connections, while the output connection dongle features 1 S/PDIF, 1 S-Video, 1 composite, and 2 RCA stereo audio connections. Arrows on the edge of the dongle help to distinguish the video input dongle from the video output dongle. The third dongle has the component video connections you’ll need for hooking the AIW X1800 XL card up to an HDTV.


Hooking everything up sounds complicated, but it’s actually fairly easy. Just plug in the card like you would normally, then hookup the I/O connector we mentioned previously. From here you’ll want to hookup the appropriate input/output dongles as well as your second VGA display. Finally, plug in the coaxial connections for FM and TV tuning (an FM antenna is provide inside the box), as well as the pass through cable for audio.

Once that’s done, boot up the computer, load all drivers and software programs included on the CATALYST CD, reboot, and you’re all done! The whole process shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes from beginning to end (depending on the speed of your computer), once you’re done, ATI’s TV tuner software will automatically scan for all your available channels, while Gemstar’s GUIDE PLUS software will download local TV listings for your area.