The Radeon All-In-Wonder is one of those unique products that comes to market with no real competition. You could certainly place it against other gaming cards in the same price range however that wouldn’t do it's multimedia features justice.

You could also compare it to a TV card with roughly the same features, however there really isn’t any direct competition ... there no other product which does the same thing (a compliment to how well ATI have done in the design and performance of previous models). So whilst the release of this card should excite the gamer's and multimedia enthusiasts amongst you it’s a real headache for us reviewers who have to write about it and give you an indication of just how good…or bad… it is.

Don’t worry though, following some really in depth testing of numerous products we’ve the complete analysis of ATI’s new Multimedia beast. For the gamers we will be looking at just how the new model compares to the Vanilla X1800XL and also to its bigger brother the X1800XT 512mb, and which is the best value for money. Then to round things up we will also take a look at how the card compares against the X800GT AIW in multimedia tasks.

Also of interest today is ATI’s new Multimedia Centre version (9.10) which comes bundled with the X1kXL AIW, we will be showing you the new features a little later.

The Card:

ATI’s AIW X1800XL is by no means a small card, in fact it is actually longer than the X1800XT or the Geforce 7800GTX 512mb which came as a surprise to us. While it is understandable that the card is larger than the standard XL, ATI haven’t really had to increase the size of AIW models in the past.

The picture above shows the X1800 AIW side by side with the X1800XT, as you can see there is around 1.5cm in difference between the two cards. For those of you who haven’t seen a XT in the flesh, this makes the AIW XL about 0.5cm wider than the average motherboard.

As you can see from the above picture the X1800XL AIW comes with a single slot cooler as standard. The cooler on our model will be used on review samples and is rather loud when running at full speed however ATI made it very clear that this is just a basic cooling unit and retail cards will have better (quieter) solutions.

By removing the heatsink we can see that the R520 chip is present underneath…

…and also underneath on the front of the card we find 256mb of Samsung DDR3 memory in the form of eight 32mb chips. As far as memory speeds and core configuration are concerned the X1800XL AIW is exactly the same as the standard X1800XL part so core and memory speeds of 500mhz and a “pipeline” count of 16. Mixed in there you also have the eight vertex units of the standard XL.

Also hidden away under the heatsink is the VIA VT1623M Scart out chip. You can see it pictured below. This chip was also used on the X800GT AIW so we will be expecting similar excellent output quality from the X1k.

Before we look at the rear of the card here is the final component which is located on the front of the card… the Tuner box.

Well, actually to say the tuner is located on the front of the card isn’t entirely correct, in a first for the AIW brand the tuner is split between the front and back of the card. You can see below the PCB sandwiched between the two sides of the gold tuner cover.

For those of you who like makes and model numbers, the tuner you’ll find underneath the cover is the Microtune MT2121. This tuner converts RF signals received through your source ariel into IF so that a demodulator can process them. When receiving Analog TV and FM radio the tuner communicates with the Philips TDA9887 demodulator. When in digital mode it passes the signal to the ATI NXT6000 DVB-T demodulator.