Scott you need to bug AMD for a preview of the AVIVO app. The quality of the app and the quality of the output will be key in my nearing dual versus quad CPU decision.

The "write to general purpose GPU" is picking up some steam! Unfortunately, you're still picking between red/green and soon you'll be picking from blue for which one you support.

I'm hoping OpenCL will be adopted, soon.

ATI didn't counter nVidia CUDA, they were the first to do stream computing (@Home client was made for ATI first too back in 2006) and they've just been slow to commercialize it in a significant way. The Tech Report and Anandtech reported on this over 2 years ago:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/10956/1

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2849

and it won't cost $30

Finally, at least one side has a brain.

OK, OK, here's a scenario question...if we are offloading compute-intensive tasks like video rendering, photo filters, etc. to GPGPU (CUDA and/or Stream) in the future to do heavy lifting....and GPGPU processing is so much faster than using an x86 processor to do the same thing, is the following possible:

General purpose add-in graphics (general processing cards) will be come as important, if not more-so than having a fast x86 CPU? In the future will everyone buy a Celeron just to boot Windows and then let the GPU do all the compute-intensive stuff? I don't mean enthusiasts...just the general way HP/Dell/etc. will configue off-the-shelf boxes?

Two thumbs up ATI but I cant afford 4850 or 4870 so Im stuck with 9600GT which is in our area almost as pricey as 4670... =)

can someone interpret this article for me? In the near future I hope to purchase a new video card, as part of a new system build. It's purely for gaming. How would Stream technology benefit sims that are generally considered CPU-intensive? I'm sure I'm not understanding, but does it mean that buying a 4xxx gpu and updating to the new driver will ease the cpu burden by offloading physics calculations to the GPU on a home-built pc.
tia for helping an ignoramus understand

there are artifacts on the jpg!

OMG thank you thank you AMD for the transcoding software.

Now me's 4850 has use beyond gaming, and there is even less incentive to upgrade my CPU.

not just that, but Nvidia is losing marketshare little by little. This should do enough to bring AMD into the 50% mark and start pushing for proper support and stuff, instead of all this "designed to play on Nvidia" trash.

Frickin' sweet. I was recently looking at video cards and was torn between a 9800GT and a 4850. I'd had a 4850 before but refunded it so I knew it was good, the price/performance between the two scaled almost exactly as did pricing. I knew the 4850 had better performance but CUDA apps, though limited, was an advantage for NV. I ended up getting a good deal on a 4850 so this news is great :)

Related to that is CPU choice and I've been back and forth between a q9550 and an e8400, the price isn't an issue since I'd keep it for a while and quad core would have usefulness, the decision was tough because of the small enclosure I want to use and the limited cooling options. I'd gone back and forth and was leaning toward the q9550 which I would just oc when needed but if this is good at release (better than Badaboom) the advantage will be back to the e8400.

Now the million dollar question is how good the conversion and compression quality is. If it's Badaboom-like I'll be dissapointed. If it's somewhat more open, maybe with plug-in options for various command line or open source encoders or the built-in encode is good I will be very pleased. In fact if it has plug-ins of some sort and support for lots of audio AND video formats I would say it will quickly surpass NV's current options.

Avivo Video Converter is NOT NEW. I've seen it out and running since roughly the 4850 launch, and I saw betas of something similar back around the 38X0 card launches. This may be the first time AMD is packaging it up and pushing it out the door with fanfare, but it's far from a new product.

Also, much like Badaboom, the range of supported input/output formats is depressingly low, at least on the previous versions. Basically if you wanted to take a DVD and make an iPod compatible MP4 file, this could do it, and do it really fast, but the encode quality and file size were far inferior to software encoders.

why, why why did i buy an 8800gt?

So..... How long until a new "ATI Stream" F@H client is out??
(And will the ATI 4000 series now compete with the Nvidia GeForce 200 series CUDA F@H client?)

This 4870 of mine has really turned out to be a great purchase.

nice1...
8.11Catalyst
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx