Hercules All In Wonder Radeon 8500DV
First off I must admit, this card is simply a marvel to look at. It has such a mean yet sleek look that it captures your eye in an instant. The Hercules Radeon AIW 8500DV is not much different to a conventional Radeon 8500 based card as Architecturally the chip used in the 8500DV is identical to the Radeon 8500 GPU.
Hercules has been in the graphics card industry for quite some time now. Incorporated in 1982 Hercules built up quite a name for themselves in this arena. In 1999 Hercules was bought over by Guillemot Corporation. Today Hercules has a very diverse range of products ranging from Speaker systems to LCD monitors. Make sure to check them out if you haven’t already done so.
Getting back to the card, the AIW Radeon 8500DV offers an array of features. The most popular feature of them all is the TV-Tuner capability of this card. The TV-Tuner allows you to watch TV on your computer along with a range of added features. One thing you’ll notice with the TV-Tuner of the AIW Radeon 8500DV from all other AIW models is that the TV-Tuner uses a programmable silicone chip for all the TV-tuning functions. So what does this mean? Well not only does reduce the overall size of the tuner, it also makes the tuning faster. This is the first TV-tuner I have come across with such a feature.
Another new addition to the AIW series is the inclusion of a fully functional remote. An included USB device acts as the reception device. The remote works on radio waves, and as a result you don’t need to have direct line of sight with the receiver. It’s supposed to work through wall as well, even though we never got to the point of checking that out. The remote allows you to control all ATI software programs and it’s so much like any conventional TV-remote, which makes it easy to operate. The remote uses 4 AAA batteries and I’m sure it lasts as long as any normal remote.
The other really interesting feature is IEEE-1394 FireWire capability of the card. This feature provided by the Agere (Lucent) IEEE-1394 chip, allows users to connect any DV source directly into the AIW 8500DV and capture video. The card includes two FireWire ports, one located directly in the card and the other in the external input/output connector. I’m sure this is a feature many users look for currently as all new camcorders and digital cameras come equipped with DV connectors.
If you had observed closely you’d notice that the card also includes a power connector at the rear, which is similar to a floppy drive power connector. This is used to power up any device attached to the FireWire port in the card.
Looking at the PCB of the card, you’ll notice that there aren’t any memory modules on top of the card. All 64MB of Samsung 5ns DDR SDRAM(4 x 16mb) are located at the bottom of the card.
One fact that needs mentioning is that the Radeon AIW 8500DV is clocked somewhat lower than the normal Radeon 8500 cards. As a result instead of the 275/275 core/memory rating, this card is clocked only at 230/190. This has been done to keep the overall cost of the card lower and make it more attractive to users rather than having an overpriced gizmo which no one would want to buy. However it certainly would have been nice to see similar specs to the normal Radeon 8500.
The core is actively cooled by a moderate sized heatsink/fan combo. However we found this not to be quite adequate while playing games as the core heated up way too much. The fan also started playing up after a few days and was giving out a messy sound for a few seconds after starting the PC. So I guess the fan is not of the best standard, but this can be easily replaced.
