Here's a real good article about some new technology built into ATI's new X1800 video card. ATI has enabled software to use the high powered graphics processor on board to speed up video encoding by a factor of 5 times faster than a dual core AMD 64 4800+ system. So this will be as much as 20 times faster than the "average" system, or better. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1880749,00.asp I had wondered about this possibilty in the past, as the top of the line gpu's from NVIDIA and ATI are nearly as complex as an Intel or AMD top of the line general purpose chip. Now ATI has gotten smart and made this possibilty a reality. I would assume that ATI will have a developer's kit for those wanting to include this capability into their software. This will give ATI a big competitive advantage in selling graphics cards to those who do a lot of video encoding.
Well, I was looking at an X1800XT for my next PC and that just about settles it. it's about damn time someone thought of doing that. Good on ATi.
