Flaccid AIW card

The Whatnought · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:23 am Post subject: Flaccid AIW card

So, being price conscious but wanting a decently powerfull card I bought an ATI AIW 9700 AGP. I always buy built by ATI cards as I have found them to be more reliable (heh). But they always seem to have odd personality quirks. In this case I'm running on an Athlon 1.4GHz +1G mem with an older beta Win2K os, but I have all (and apparently all there will be) the updates for it so it's about as good but less annoying than XP. Short version, I have all the required parts (according to ATI) needed to make the card run at peak efficiency and more. One of the things you are supposed to be able to do when running at peak efficiency is to have the video running, cloned, on both monitor outputs. This it does. However, I cannot seem to get the video overlay (AKA Easylook) to work on both monitors. All I ever wanted was a video card that output exactly what was on the screen on the TV as well without having to change a bunch of settings. I have engaged the help of the ATI troubleshooting guy, no luck. I have tried every single combination & permutation of Catalyst settings, res settings, Hardware settings, drivers & randomly shorting out the board with a screwdriver that I can think of. I stopped short of sending the ATI guy screenshots of my settings menu as he seemed unwilling to believe I hadn't missed something obvious like the "Match source video setting". What confuses me is that it doesn't seem to require that much processing power to generate the overlay graphics, but the issue seems to follow the form of a lack of processor ability on the card. I can get the overlay to appear on one or the other outputs, but I have to swap display mapping. I can get it to display on both monitors but I get no video. It only wants to give me one or the other, and ATI swears that I should have no problems getting Easylook & video to show on both monitors. Any ideas? Anyone else run into this? An interesting side note: The 9700 series is one of ATI "middle child" boards, which tends to be the case with any ATI board that seems cheaper than it should be, and is now discontinued while the 9600 & 9800 are not. ATI seems to have an affinity for doing weird things with their various processor lines & selling them as solid video cards even though the card is "not the standard setup" ("Oh, that model requires the Svideo ouput to be glued on by the user"). Oh well...
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ToggleHead · TWEAKGURU Joined: 03 Mar 2004 Posts: 4360 Location: Jersey

I cant really help here...i dont know graphics cards very well.......but allow me to say WELCOME TO TN!!!!!!!
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[KoG]^weaZel · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 5:12 pm Post subject:

as far as I know what you are trying to do is not an option with an ATI card.
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The Whatnought · Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 5:19 am Post subject: Not according to ATI!

The guy I talked to seemed to think it was possible, the box I got seemed to think it was possible, & the 200 page manual I had to download seemed to think it was possible. Its one of those things where I explained it verrrry carefully to ATI using big boy technical terms & they suggested I check the manual, told me to do the obvious stuff, & ended up as stumped as I am but at no point did they say "oh, riiiight, that model of card can't do that". In fact, the guy even thought it was weird that I can get the overlay to display w/o video. The card also "Fails to initialize TV" when theatre options are set certain ways. I'm beginning to think it's related to the fact that the AIW Radeons seem to come with half as much memory as the non AIWs. Here's a question: Occasionally when running the TV or large player files the system will sloooow down or BSOD me, perhaps indicating a instr. set issue or an overheat issue? I run into similar problems w/ graphic intensive games. Works great for awhile then slows down or freezez the whole system. Anything sound familiar? At this point I'm trying to go at the problem from unexpected angles, perhaps I can catch it napping. So I turn to the people in the trenches. Hey, TN fixed my Gemstar glitch, so you're waaay ahead of ATI at this point. Good forum!
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[KoG]^weaZel · Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:29 am Post subject:

come on guys! I know some of you are running the AIW cards!!
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fussnfeathers · Lord of the Tweak Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 2763

Well, you pretty much did what I would have suggested, and turn off Theater Mode. The fact that you're having problems with both games and video would point me to a bad driver first. Try using the ATI removal tool, and going back to an earlier driver.............EasyLook is a new-ish thing, maybe the 9700 AIW has problems with that software. I haven't had an AIW in quite awhile, but I do remember that I had problems getting video files to display on the TV. They would be fine on the monitor, but as soon as I dragged the media player over to the TV the video would vanish. I solved the problem by getting rid of the AIW card.

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