Introduction

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

In 1996 ATI wooed the technology world with its All-in-Wonder graphics card, the first single-slot product to offer 2D, 3D, and multimedia video acceleration, TV output, an advanced TV tuner, and video capture. In early spring, ATI announced the All-in-Wonder 128, their third generation multimedia upgrade, which would be offered in two distinct versions.

The first, the 16MB edition, offered the same technology as last year's All-in-Wonder Pro with the only difference being the Rage128 graphics chip. The 32MB version scheduled for release for summer, implemented ATI's custom Rage Theater video encoding/decoding chip which promises consumer-electronic quality TV input and output. Both Matrox and 3dfx have released their own high-end "all-in-one" products the Matrox G400-TV and the Voodoo3 3500 TV, so it's up to ATI to bring in the show-stopping finale!

The competition ATI faces from Matrox and 3dfx is daunting. Built around the G400 chipset, the Marvel G400 offers great 3D performance and image quality, as well as Environment Mapped Bump Mapping and DualHead display technology. 3dfx's V3 3500-TV on the other hand, offers amazing 3D graphics performance with a chip clocked at 183MHz -- double the clockspeed of the All-in-Wonder 128. ATI's All-in-Wonder 128 32MB, however is built around the original Rage 128 announced in late 1998 - ATI's recently announced mobile chip, the Rage Mobility 128 chip should offer even better performance, and better image quality.

A New Hope

ATI's claim to fame has always been quality video and multimedia performance, and indeed, they've never been matched by anyone other than S3. This time, ATI's multimedia prowess comes in the form of the Rage Theater which offers a 10-bit video DAC as well as 6-tap Vertical, 10-tap Horizontal Filters for TV-out and improved video input. Will the Rage Theater be enough to strike back at Matrox's and 3dfx's multimedia solution? We obtained an exclusive All-in-Wonder 128 32MB from ATI and put it through our barrage of benchmarks and also put it through a gauntlet of multimedia tests. Read on to find out how it performed!