Will kvcd/kdvd encoding be boosted by Nvidia 68000 Ultra?
 

Hello all 'ye of much K-wisdom'

I have a few questions, which may be ULTRA stupid question, but they are - nevertheless - unanswered even after much searching on the internet. So please bear with me, if these are ULTRA stupid questions:

1. Will kvcd/kdvd encoding be boosted by Nvidia 68000 Ultra?
Obviously normally all new exotic hardware demands for special programming, but NVIDIAs own material on the newest version of the NV40 cards (ie the Ultra version) will have an extra chip which will take over much of the CPUs decoding AND encoding of MPEG files. My question is this then; does anybody know how much and if so approximately how much faster will this make encoding of K-vcd / -dvd (on a 2.8Ghz P4 system)?

2. I guess my question is really only based on me not being convinced that the chip 'can take over the workload without the programs being tailored to use the GPUs special features. Is that possible?

3. TO ALL (K-)PROGRAMMERS. If special instructions are necessary - what are the odds that these will be so easy to implement, that most programs (CCE, TMPGENC, asf.) will support the chip within a few months?

4. Finally (a bit off K-topic): other than the fact that ATIs card is cheaper is there any K-reason why I should NOT buy the nvidia card?

THX to the community - and YOUR time if you can give me some pointers here... even though the questions are a bit far out :oops:

Regards to all ye pioneers,

Well seeing as a conversion is 99.999% number crunching Id say it would render the same speed on a tnt2 as the GPU will only make a difference when playing.

Encoding is 100% maths, not 99.999...

yeah ok, well i was reserving 0.001% just in case you knew different.

I guess then I was right in my presumption that Nvidia has been promising more than they should..?!

Perhaps not but until software aren't updated to use the instruction wired in the chipset, they will use only the CPU. So no gain...

OK - Dialhot (and thanx so far) - I may be an idiot, but just to clarify...

Are you saying that driver updates will be enough for the card to produce this (alleged) dramatic increase? 8O
Or are you saying that both drivers and individual programs will have to implement support for the new special extra chip? :?

(if I didn't make that clear Nvidias 68000 Ultra cards will have the 68000 GPU AND then the extra chip which is the one I'm asking about)...

Which programs will use the ENCODING part of the ard, the drivers or the individual programms ?

Drivers are used for display only, so for DECODING. So...

OK - thanks a lot for the help Dialhot!

Now I guess I'll wait and see wether and if so which programs decide to use the chip for ENCODING :wink: !

Thx - like I thought then - I just couldn't understand how it would help both encoding and decoding without the programs being designed for the chip... It still sounds interesting though - especially if it's a 'dramatic' increase in encoding times...

SO IF anyone here has any idea (not just guessing - preferably someone professionally involved in 'the industry') of how certain or uncertain it is that this chip will be supported - PLZ pm me or somethin :-)

and thx again dialhot!

Regards,

None :!:

-kwag

Ok - Kwag! 8O

I shall save a bundle then :wink:

thx for your replies - and many regards,

I think that until Nvidia provides encoding software designed to use the chip on the card or makes deals with major encoding software providers, buying this card is definitely useless (at least as far as encoding is concerned.)

these Video DSP type additions to the recent cards are very promising,
I hope eventually a way to pipe AVISynth filters through these cards is developed.

The S3 deltachrome aparently has the best implementation.

It may be the case that these features never get used except maybe by dvd playback software.

Divx Networks do seem to be planning to use these new card features with their codecs and players though.

What Dialhot is saying is the ENCODING software has to be rewritten to take advantage of these VIDEO SHADER / DSP type graphics abilities.
For example TMPGenc is written to make maximum use of available cpu power, it would have to be rewritten to use a GPU instead.

Since not many people have these cards yet and only a TINY minority of those who have them need video encoding features like we do, it could take a long time for anyone to actually update any program to use these extra features.

A possibility is a partnership between a card producer and a software developper to deliver a bundle hardware/software in the same box.
This kind of agreement already exists in capture world but they are pro/semi-pro solution (means "cost a lot of money").

OK - thx all so far for your responses...

It would be nice to be able to cut encoding times by another say 40-70 %... Oh well... I can always dream - and look out for a bundle. Pinnacle maybe...

Regards,