Current state of video cards other than games?

[brotj7]

It's been a while, I seem to remember AMD was all about power savings and midrange performance and then the 5000 series was about to drop and could do 9 screens. Nvidia was concentrating on GPGPU but still had the top card until the 59?? started getting reviews.

So, what is the deal with:

GPU assisted encoding? Which authoring programs can use the assist?


Is physics X still in use?


Power consumption still an advertized feature? Does it keep cards sub 100w?

 

[greenhawk]

not 100% up with what is what in GPUs, but here is my take of it.

GPU assisted, depends on the program, not a major feature. Some use GPU but most are starting to lean towards using the inbuilt GPU of the CPU (integrated one). But I do not do it as most reviews I have read indicate it works well for shrinking a file for a mobile device, the rest of the time, quality suffers some what (no idea if just the program doing the quick and dodgy or if that is the best it can do).

But as this feature uses the integrated GPU (sandy bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs only), it is not a feature programmers are falling over to support.

re Physics, some are around, but as nVidia purchased it and locked it to only using their cards, it is pretty much turning into a dead end in terms of support in games. There is a competing version IIRC but it is CPU driven.

Re Power, not a great feature depending on which GPU you are looking for, the mid and high ends are all over the place. the nVidia's 570 is 150W or so and the 580 pushes over 200W. The newer range is better (6xx) but no idea with AMD/ATI's range. Ofcourse, if you look at the lower end cards, the power is lower, but not advertised as often as "only xx watts". That is peak run power of course, idle power of all cards (ie when not gaming ect) can be quite low, some in the 20W range.

 

[Jaydip]

Ok Here are the answers

1.But CUDA assisted encoding is better than AMD's offerings at present.But they are both inferior to Intel QuickSync technology.U can use media expresso for encoding.
2.Physx is still a niche feature.Every now and then we get some good titles with physx but the numbers are far and few between.
3.Yeah it does work,idle power consumption has taken a big stride in the recent gpus.

 

[2is]

Current state is that if you're not gaming, Intels HD 4000 IGP will handle everything a regular consumer would need/want. When I say regular I'm not including those into GPU based DC projects.

 

[brotj7]

Whoops DIII dropped and I totally forgot about my post...

Thank you for all the answers.

Our primary uses are home theatre, encoding both Bluray and home movies, serving movies to a projector, and a few games(BF3, Fallout, MS Flight Sim 10, and now Diablo III). Does photoshop get video card assistance yet?

What about audio passthrough? Are any types not supported or does anything get lost when hooked up to a receiver vid HDMI? Does NVidea support audio passthrough now?

We are currently close to the end of our basement remodel and are putting a good chunk of change into a projector, screen, and speakers. I had ripped all of our Bluray movies with RipBot 264 @cq16, but I am afraid I reencoded them wrong for a 120-145" screen.

If I have to reencode again(~70+), is there a difference in encoding between the different card companies/or within a product line? (Maybe due to FP precision???) Would that be visible at that size?

Also we currently have an 8800gt paired with a Q6600. Would it make sense to keep it for it's CUDA cores?