graphic cards for encoding?

[RonnieDaking]

I heard of graphic cards that can encode hi-def format for you faster then a cpu can . Any truth to that? Also is the MSI Radeon HD 3450 Graphics Card any good for it [or gaming for that matter]?

[Kariudo]

I think all the HD series cards (ie, anything from ATI HD2xxx and up) have h.264 acceleration hardware...but I'm not sure if all those cards can do h.264 encoding.

From what I remember when I looked into it, you have to use the avivo video converter...which I was never able to access/figure out/get to work

but yeah, encoding on a [decent] gpu would be faster than doing it on the cpu.

...after doing a little looking, the AVIVO video converter uses the cpu rather than the gpu unless you have an HD48xx or HD46xx card (with catalyst 8.12 drivers or later)

[Zarxrax]

Graphics cards are not really useful for encoding, at least at the moment.

[s0matic]

You might be talking about CUDA. CUDA is only supported by nVidia cards, and if you have a 8xxx series or higher, your card should support it. Full list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA#Supported_GPUs

However, the application you're using must have CUDA support to take advantage of this. There are H.264 CUDA encoders out there, and I believe Premiere CS4 has support for it, but if I'm not mistaken the quality probably won't match what x264 can put out. And AFAIK x264 doesn't support CUDA.

My advice would just to stick to x264 and get the best multi-core CPU you can buy (Core i7 comes to mind).

[Kariudo]

AMD/ATI has a competing technology called ATI Stream, which supposedly works on all ATI cards later than the HD2350.

No idea if there are any ATI Stream apps out there though

[NeoQuixotic]

There is also the OpenCL initiative to provide an open standard to GPUs. But widespread use of GPUs being used to do more than graphics is still a bit out there. Because there is no single standard at the moment, it doesn't make a lot of sense to provide the fuctionality. Although, CUDA does seem to be used a decent amount now. And of course this happens after I go with an ATI card . And the AVIVO encoder sucks due to lack of control of the encoder and the quality of the output being just blah.

[the Black Monarch]

Any truth to that?

Technically, yes. For all practical purposes, no.

Also is the MSI Radeon HD 3450 Graphics Card any good for it [or gaming for that matter]?

No. The Radeon HD2000 and HD3000 series both sucked. Get an HD4000 or an Nvidia card.