R520 and media center PCs

[Elias]

Seeing the new AVIVO tech from ATI in this thread makes me wonder if the upcoming X1800 series of video cards are being marketed more for living room computers. While increasing the number of colors may make regular computing more vibrant it wouldn't do much for games. The other features (hardware encoding, etc.) are more suitable for a media center-type PC than a gaming PC in my opinion. Dual DVI is also nice, but more from a productivity standpoint than gaming.

Anyone else wonder if this is the direction ATI is headed? We haven't heard about any new gaming features other than SM3.0 support, which had been expected since last summer. Or is the XT just aimed at being an ultra-capable card?

 

[zender]

Actually ATi has always been more of a "Media focused" video card provider. It was not until the 8500 series that they were even considered to be a decent platform for games.

 

[Shieze]

Just because you haven't heard of any other gaming features does not mean that they don't exist. Wait until the launch of the product and then you can make judgement.

 

[Apple740]

Anyone else wonder if this is the direction ATI is headed?

More and more 'hardcore' gamers use their pc also for their "home theatre" (watching movies on a projector/plasma etc), i think we can only encourage the direction Ati is going to.
Delevering best of both worlds is imo the future.

 

[Elias]

Actually ATi has always been more of a "Media focused" video card provider. It was not until the 8500 series that they were even considered to be a decent platform for games.

But the AIW cards were marketed separately. Its interesting that these features are specifically mentioned about the mainstream cards this gen, at least so far.

Just because you haven't heard of any other gaming features does not mean that they don't exist. Wait until the launch of the product and then you can make judgement.

Thanks for the input, but I'm discussing what has been described and how ATI is marketing the card presently.

 

[dderidex]

But the AIW cards were marketed separately. Its interesting that these features are specifically mentioned about the mainstream cards this gen, at least so far.

Oh, really?

What was the high-end card of the r100 line, then? "Radeon 64 DDR VIVO" - the midrange cards (the lower-clocked Radeon 32 DDR and Radeon 32 SDR) didn't have the VIVO functionality.

I actually remember being fairly torqued off at ATI for removing any video capability at ALL from their mainstream cards and leaving it solely to the All-In-Wonder line (that they charged a premium for) when they released subsequent generations of cards.

It's nice to see both ATI and nVidia moving back to having video-in capabilities on their cards.

 

[Elias]

Oh, really?

What was the high-end card of the r100 line, then? "Radeon 64 DDR VIVO"

Thatsright VIVO has been around in the regular lineup for awhile.

 

[Shifra]

Avivo is the official name of what ATI was developing under the codename "kaleidoscope". As already said, ATI has always lead in the development of a card that can be used in an entertainment PC. They've been making a All in Wonder version literally since they started making graphics cards. Personally i think this is a huge leap to give them some real uniqueness on all their cards. Lets face it, 6800 or X800 you were looking at really very little reason to get one over the other except for price. It may happen again this year it may not, but over just the simple graphics card its a very nice feature some if not all people can really enjoy. Plus i suspect Vista to take serious advantage of some of this stuff, as well as perhaps some games. Remember the Machinima demo Crytek did in conjunction with ATI, the whole idea to bring movie like graphics and motion to games. Have to wait and see.