[Solved] Use the GPU for video encoding?

So my machine is painfully slow at video encoding. I was thinking of building a new i7 machine them someone pointed out a trend that some software can utilize the GPU to handle the encoding and not the CPU.

Example would be an nVidia card with CUDA technology.

So question is, could I increase my machine's speed when encoding by just using the GPU instead of building a new machine?

What are you using now?

Sorry. I am using a Core2 Duo E6400 and Sony Vegas. I dont think vegas is cuda enabled but there are other apps out there I can use to do the encoding. Badaboom is one that I found.

What's your current GPU?

You should get a new GPU, that will make your machine a lot faster, also virus removal and hard drive defragmentation and registry cleanup.

What res is your monitor (eg. 1400x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1080)

I would suggest the gts 450 for your uses if on 1680x1050 or below for 1920x1080 get gtx 460 and for above that gtx 560 ti

SO are you saying that a new GPU card would free up the core CPU? I thought that there is simply an on board nVidia chip which handles the graphics.

To run CUDA applications, you'd need at least an 8xxx generation video card. Yours is a 7xxx generation and wouldn't be able to run CUDA even if it tried (there are hardware modifications made just to be able to run these).

And if you're concerned about quality, I wouldn't recommend CUDA or Stream accelerated encoding. Tom's did an article on it, and there are quality differences between the two. I would only recommend these if you're on a rush and maybe you just need some videos for your mobile (iPod, iPhone, Zune, etc).

Stick with cpu encoding if you're doing it for your HTPC.

+1 stick to CPU/RAM bound encoding

good point.

Best answer selected by jranaudo.