ATI's All-in-Wonder (AiW) TV tuner card took another quantum leap in technology today, when ATI announced a new version of the card based on the current X800 chip generation. The card promises to deliver the performance of the X800 XL graphics card whilst providing all the extensive functionality associated with the All-in-Wonder.

The PCI Express-based AiW X800 XL integrates a 400 MHz core (R430) and 256 MByte of 490 MHz GDDR3 memory. Besides the hardware upgrade, that is promised to bring a graphics performance similar to an X800 XL card, ATI made a substantial change of strategy marketing its AiW cards. From now on, the company said, Microsoft's Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE 2005) is directly supported and European customers will play a more important role in what features the product offers.
The AiW X800 XL will probably cost you about $400 and is positioned at the traditional higher end mainstream price point. However, for more budget minded users, there is also the new AiW 2006, a TV tuner card that carries the Radeon 9600 chip and 256 MByte memory for $200.