awesome!

nice innovation on AMDs part... hopefully nvidia will stop being a resource pig... and actually come out with something ground breaking again

so their proving that this tech not only works with amd processors, but also intel. very nice. it seems that their trading a small loss in the cpu market for a potential bigger gain in the gpu market.

i hope everything works out better than expected, it might give them some much needed income to catch up a little to intel.

what about HD 3000 series?

w00t this is awesome, way to go guys... don't you love when your stuff just keeps getting better? but the time saved is really amazing, i can't wait for their version... will this simulate upconversion like on some dvd players?

This is nice, I will definetly take advantage of this converter they are going to release.

Its interesting that they chose such a fast processor for comparison, to get a better difference woulldnt a slower processor or dual core have been better?

Nice, but until a common solution for both ATI and Nvidia is reached, applications for Cuda and ATI Stream will remain few and far between. If you remember, there was this guy, Eran Bandit, trying (and succeeding to some degree) to run Cuda on ATI cards and strangely enough, it was ATI not showing any support with Nvidia actually helping out ( http://www.maximumpc.com/article/n [...] g_a_radeon ).

Its interesting that they chose such a fast processor for comparison, to get a better difference woulldnt a slower processor or dual core have been better?

its also interssting that they used an intel processor...hmmm..

Hopefully Nvidia will wise up and make a similiar software as an added value for its customers. Then agian, I brought a cheap geforce 9800 gso for less than $50. So I don't expect anything.

Actually nVidia has a smiler product. It's called BadaBOOM ( see: http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3334&p=20 ). Link: http://www.nvidia.com/content/forc [...] wnload.asp
Trial copy is good for 30 encodings or 30 days. Full version is $30. Not too bad if you are converting HD videos and providing you have a 8x00 or later CUDA enabled GPU.

LOL!

hehe,at least they admit Intel is faster in video. they could be thinking of using the Core i7 soon! hahaha

Cyberlink and arcsoft??
Meh. Show me some Adobe, Autodesk or Avid products using it and I will care.

Both the 3xxx and 4 xxx series can do this, and its free, unlike badaboom. Im sure using a slower cpu will show slower times, but this config shows its 17x faster, so even if it lost half its time on a slow dual core, still 8x faster, and its free

Too bad the encoder sucks, quality wise. X264 is faster (when using comparable fast settings)

"It’s interesting that AMD chose not only an Intel CPU, but Intel’s most powerful CPU for this comparison. Most consumer rigs have far less horsepower under the hood, so we look forward to testing this, and making a comparison to what Nvidia has to offer, on more mainstream hardware." AMD never had any problem admitting the current intel top models are better than their best ones. Everyone knows that. It's not really a problem though, as AMD appearently didn't intend to compete at the very top.

Try Radeon HD 4400? and Celeron? How much it increase? With one GB ram with the same test case....

I don't understand why is everybody so excited about AMD using INTEL procesor to demonstrate it's ATI card power.
If they used an AMD processor, everyone would have been complaining the test is biased because of use of slow processor.
It's seems like a wise choice from AMD in my opinion.

@ Dokworm Uhh... wasn't there just a plugin released for Adobe cs4 which added CUDA support for nVidia cards that support the feature...? amd having support for applications which can use the stream process in video encoding is a nice catch-up, hopefully Tom's will make some type of shoot-out article.

I wonder how big role the cpu actually has in this acceleration thing, would a system with a slower cpu show even larger gains when comparing conversion with and without the gpu stream thingie. Or is a fast cpu needed to feed the gpu with all the data it needs to run at full speed?

Can't be sure but I think a slower cpu would create more of a difference. Assuming all the actual encoding can take place on the gpu, the cpu would only be in charge of delivering and storing data.

i can't help but think that this is an indirect challenge to the up coming core i7 CPUs by making the GPU a little more desirable upgrade as opposed to a CPU upgrade.

either way, this sounds great. i wonder if it scales with multi GPU setups as well?

dotn get me wrong for starters im no fan boy , my last gpu was an ati , my curent an nivida ,

but your dead wrong about nivida not making inovatiosn you , forget nivida's reccent release of drivers that allow thier gpu's to hanlde agiea style physics processing ... well i dint i ahve one of those chips and i can tell you performance in agiea powered physic's games doubled with that update .

Would be nice also if you can configure your system to choose which card does what, which NVidia's currently able to do. I'd love to recycle my 3800 cards for physics or whatever while keeping my 4800 cards dedicated to graphics.

The hole idea behind the 'using an intel CPU ' is what moriarty_ said and saying : 'Hey guys why buy a 1000$ dollars CPU when you could buy a cheap quad core from AMD and a nice Radeon at 200$ and you get 1000% peed-up. Oh and that up-coming Nehalem ...wasn't it supposed to be better in video encoding? well our GPU's are better and cheaper.' IMHO i think it's a good choice for AMD.

nVidia may have been first to concept with BadaBoom, but it seems ATi/AMD has a much better implementation, not to mention treating their customers with respect by offering it for free. As if nVidia doesn't already stick it to the customer enough with their premiums...

Don't get me wrong, though. I like nvidia's hardware, I just don't like their corporate practices.

@jaydeejohn
Are you sure that the 3xxx series can do this as well?