Consumers will never be completely comfortable with the PC as a permanent living-room multimedia component until the killer application and hardware arrive that will make the computer a true entertainment hub-media hubs too often cut features to cut price. The ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro graphics card could change that. ATI has combined solid hardware, a blazingly fast 3-D GPU, and a suite of polished media apps, leaving almost nothing out. The price tag is a stiff $499 list, but if you're looking to build a well-appointed living-room PC that can function as a TV, TiVo-like personal video recorder (PVR), digital VCR, and system for current and upcoming games, read on.

The new All-in-Wonder card uses the same version of ATI's latest GPU, the Radeon 9800 Pro, used on the 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. The processor has a 380-MHz engine clock, a 340-MHz memory clock, eight pixel pipes, four vertex pipes, and support for DirectX 9.0 Pixel Shaders 2.0. In the recent showdown that sister site Extreme Tech had between the 256MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card (which has a 350-MHz memory clock) and nVidia's new GeForceFX 5900 Ultra, the ATI GPU held its own.