Performance Leap: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra

Video Processor

Graphics chips have supported hardware accelerated video playback for quite a while now. But to date, the de- and encoding of compressed video data is still left to the CPU.

NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 as well all other versions of the NV4x graphics processor come with a separate, programmable video processor. Think of it as a chip within a chip which will handle video acceleration functions and also sports a real video hardware encoder/decoder.

• High Quality Video
• Motion Adaptive De-interlacingHigh quality scaling & filteringVideo de-blockingIntegrated TV-encoder
• Complete HDTV Solution
• Transport stream handlingHDTV Output (720p, 1080i,480p, CGMS)
• Complete PVR Solution
• Hardware Audio/VideoSynchronizationMPEG 1/2/4 encode/decodeWMV9 decode acceleration
• HDCP Support

No changes to any program or video files are necessary to take advantage of the acceleration decoding features, as the driver intercepts all DirectX calls and forwards them directly to the video processor. In the case of MPEG 1/2/4 encoding, however, special software is required. Adobe has already announced support in upcoming versions of the After Effects suite.