What IS GPU video encoding?

This may be a stupid question, but there's a lot of buz surrounding nVidia's announcement that the new forceware drivers will support GPU video encoding; but what exactly is GPU video encoding? I know that it's supposed to be an extreme bump in graphical performance. But will it be for video rendering? 3D rendering? Gaming...? And what does this mean in terms of hardware? Will I need a new MB to utilize these new drivers?

As I understand it, its using the GPU (or video card) to encode video instead of the CPU. ATI brought about something called AVIVO (different from VIVO) quite awhile ago on their x1xxx line. AVIVO is mainly used to transcode video from one format to another, though I *think* that it can encode also. (if it can't, I'm sure AMD can update AVIVO to allow it)

I'm not sure what you mean by "an extreme bump in graphical performance.". It will not run your games any faster, nor will it make anything look better. It will encode video using your GPU instead of your CPU. If you don't encode video, you'll never use this feature. For example, I tested AVIVO with my x1800XT, and noted that it worked. I've never touched it since then.