Toshiba SpursEngine Add-In Video Cards Coming Soon

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Did I miss something...why would you want a $250 to $400 card to take over SOME of the duties of a $50 to $999 video card. Have they considered putting these cards in 50" and up TVs instead? (I'm not sure how much these things do, but a $250 video card can clean up high def video nicely..remove noise from cable, correct dithering, ...)
 

evilshuriken

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"The SpursEngine is able to encode or decode HD video thanks to hardware based MPEG2 and H.264 codecs".
So this would be used for hardware accelerating video transcoding and playback?
That sounds nice, but a graphics card can accelerate HD play back as well as play games for around the same price, and should eventually allow for acceleration of video encoding once the software is ready. So, is this really necessary?
 

kschoche

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The cool part about this is that its an add-on, meaning you can still have HD playback/encoding/etc on a laptop or desktop sporting integrated graphics, which may save money and power depending on your requirements.
However, imo the XDR memory requirement is absolutely crippling the cost effectiveness of these chip..

 

ceteras

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A chip dedicated to multimedia jobs would be great if it could be included in low-power laptops, the kind used for casual tasks.
If the price would not be too high, a celeron, atom or via processor, integrated graphics (for lower power consumption) + toshiba's SE could make a great laptop for a certain market segment.
 

ceteras

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I also wonder, if the presence of a SpursEngine in a PC could someway lead to porting PS3 games on PC?
That would be way cool, but I seriously doubt it will ever be done.

And regarding comparisons with gpu, I guess this chip gets the job done with lower power requirements.
 
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For less than $200 I'd pick up an hd4850 before this gimick.
 

zodiacfml

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we're saying that you get a video card when you only have integrated graphics. and yeah, an HD4850 would be a lot better and cheaper even if it is big or uses a lot of electricity.
this could be interesting if it can be used in Folding or any application, but with a PS3, still pointless product. probably,there's excess manufacturing capability of cell chips.
 
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Toshiba will sell some of those cards only with their premium laptops, to people who doesn't know much about computers, and that's all. Rest will buy something like AMD Puma or similar.
 
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