ATI plans all-in-one graphics card
The most important will likely be the All-In-Wonder Pro, a PCI card that will be available in retail from January 1998, priced somewhere between £200-250. The card will have all the features of ATI's smash hit Rage Pro-based Expert@Play card including support for 8Mb RAM, plus new features such as TV tuner, Brooktree video decoder, and support for teletext and Intercast, the Intel-backed technology for receiving interactive information while watching televised programmes.
Before that, ATI will ship its DVD card with MPEG-2 hardware. The card will ship in Viglen's Home Pro line of PCs that will be co-branded by Microsoft and sold through Dixons.
Separately, ATI will release a dye-shrink of its 2D VT chip in the first quarter of 1998. The firm said there is still some demand in corporates for 2D-only solutions but added that this would be the last 2D-dedicated chip it makes.
"It's become just as cheap to make 3D/2D chips as 2D-only," said Norbert Kuperjans, technical marketing manager for ATI Europe.