Toshiba anuncia LapTop com co-processador Cell

[Evandro]

http://forum.clubedohardware.com.br/toshiba-anuncia-laptop/557831?p=2918984#post2918984

Isso pode interessar..

[Robertoy]

Toshiba master plan unveiled

Involves sticking it to Sony

By Paul Taylor: Wednesday, 30 July 2008, 3:47 PM

SOME PEOPLE have been speculating about Toshiba’s so-called Super-Resolution Technology (SRT) and the “DVD Download DL” logo that has come up recently, as Tosh had registered this with the DVD Forum at their last Steering Committee.

We cornered a Toshiba suit at an event this morning and managed to extract some choice quotes about what’s Tosh’s strategy for this market in the near future, how SRT fits in and what the heck is DVD Download DL.

So here’s the low-down. SRT technology is what we all expected: a SpursEngine stuck in a DVD player that upscales your DVD resolution to something close to (but not quite) 1080p – similar to that Qosmio G55 proposition. The untrained eye is unlikely to tell the difference between this and 1080p HD. We’ve seen some of the upscaling demos and they are quite a bit better than your standard DVD.

For the vast majority of consumers with huge DVD libraries, this would be a Godsend. For those currently investing in Blu-ray, you’ll feel a bit more than annoyed, as you’ve been buying up Blu-ray discs at a premium and… lo and behold, here comes DVD again.

So what’s DVD Download DL? Well, according to our source, “DVD Download DL is about bringing additional movie features that DVD users would see in HD-DVDs, to the DVD player”. In essence, adding value to your pre-existing DVD collection by giving it content from HD discs. Yes. This means that Toshiba will release (Christmas 2008 in Japan is a good guess) an SRT-enabled, web-connected, DVD player that will automatically download extras according to the movie you’re playing. “We believe the future is the internet connection piping down movies to your home” added Mr. Anonymous.

Toshiba is also sponsoring development of the oh-so-important software/middleware that will support the SpursEngine consumer scene – and that would include the SpursEngine Developer’s Forum 2008, that started this Monday – most notable (and recent) of which is CRI Middleware’s deal to create a framework for other developers to… err… develop their own solutions.

So Tosh’s master plan is two-fold. First, they undermine the entire proposition of Blu-ray (and Blu-ray disc sales in particular), and then they skip the format war entirely and dump the whole thing down your fat internet connection. As you can imagine, details are sketchy as to how this will be done. There are a lot of questions to which answers aren’t set in stone at the moment. “We’ll continue to bet on DVD”, said the grinning chappie.

There are a lot of kinks to work out in this plan: regions are a problem, as content differs from region to region, and sometimes even within the same region; On the retail end of business, outside of Japan, Toshiba consumer electronics isn't exactly the first brand you’re looking at to buy as a DVD player; and then comes all the legal/licensing red tape and studio involvement that means getting those extra features to the consumer (ripping them off new Blu-ray discs would be good for starters).

Locally, we hear that Toshiba will be converging its laptop and CE businesses in order to make this possible. This is Europe, you see, and Toshiba isn't a huge player in the CE business. Leveraging it with the laptop business might give it the edge.

Parallel to all this, Toshiba is also striking deals within the PC market to license their SpursEngine technology as a hardware encoding/decoding solution for video editing pros. Leadtek, which presented their SpursEngine-based video editing card at Computex 2008, is one example, but we’re sure there are a lot more to come.

We don’t expect Sony to sit idly by while Toshiba flanks it this hard – Sony also has access to the CBE and is already selling its own cut-down video processing engine. How hard could it be to flip the firmware on the PS3 to do the same upscaling pony trick, even at the expense of Blu-ray sales?

The worst that can happen is this brings down pricing on the Blu-ray faster than Sony’s official marketing plan, meaning the consumer ends up winning all-round.

A big thanks goes out to Nick Trakosas who pointed out the SRT news in the press and fed me some links on the matter. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/30/toshiba-master-plan-unveiled

Roberto

[Poyta]

WTF is Toshiba Quad Core HD Processor?

ou melhor q q é co-processador

alguem explica em portugues

achei a resposta

http://futuro.você/2008/06/17/notebook-qosmio-g55-tem-co-processador-cell-do-ps3/

[Evandro]

É um outro tipo de processador que não o central e o gráfico..

Pra programas que sabem utilizá-lo ele é um monstro. Mas não são todos os programas que sabem utiliza-lo..

[Robertoy]

Utilizando programas com suporte ao processador SpursEngine, a performance para encoding deve ser monstruosa mesmo...

http://www.htforum.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1196857&postcount=537

http://www.htforum.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1197417&postcount=547

Comparação entre encoder por hardware (SpursEngine) e encoder por software (utilizando somente o poder de processamento do processador do computador)

Se a placa para PC com SpursEngine não for cara, vai ser uma opção bastante interessante.

Roberto

[Robertoy]

Matéria dos nossos irmãos portugueses com o SpursEngine

Video da EXAME Informática de Portugal sobre o Toshiba Quad Core HD (A análise completa da revista EXAME Informática sobre o Toshiba Quad Core HD Processor está na revista Exame Informática n.º158, que foi lançada no dia 21 de julho em Portugal).

"Toshiba Quad Core HD - Conheça as potencialidades do novo processador da Toshiba" (com o apoio Sony...)

Alguns dos programas que vem com o laptop e são compatíveis com o Toshiba Quad Core HD Processor (SpursEngine):

O botão UPCONVERT no software TOSHIBA DVD PLAYER. Esse botão deve fazer o upconvert utilizando Super Resolution ao assistir filmes em DVD...(Notar que na primeira imagem desse link o botão não está apertado, e na segunda imagem está...):

O filme Carros em UPCONVERT no Qosmio G50:

Toshiba Quad Core HD (Vídeo)

A Toshiba desenvolveu um novo processador baseado no Cell, o CPU da Playstation 3, que permite adicionar novas funcionalidades e maior desempenho aos novos Qosmio.

Os Qosmio F50 e G50 trazem uma grande novidade tecnológica, um processador de quatro núcleos, inteiramente dedicado à aceleração de funções multimédia, sobretudo vídeo.

O Toshiba Quad Core HD foi criado para complementar o processador central do sistema (CPU) e a placa gráfica. Os novos Qosmio já incluem aplicações que tiram partido do Toshiba Quad Core HD, nomeadamente um leitor de vídeo DVD que faz upconvert para alta definição; um conversor de formatos de vídeo; um sistema de detecção de faces e reconhecimento de gestos (para controlo da interface através do movimento da mão); e a capacidade de indexar vídeos através dos conteúdos (por exemplo, dividir o vídeo em cenas sempre que uma face é detectada).

Não perca a análise desta tecnologia na Exame Informática n.º158, nas bancas a 21 de Julho.

http://exameinformatica.clix.pt/noticias/hardware/997803.html

A EXAME Informática também esteve presente na apresentação dos Toshiba Qosmio em Londres em junho:

http://www.htforum.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1158253&postcount=326

Video de apresentação do Toshiba Qosmio G50 (Itália)

Roberto

[Robertoy]

Sobre o evento "SpursEngine Developers Forum 2008" ocorrido em 25 de julho no Japão:

http://www.htforum.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1199007&postcount=570

Comentários e fotos de parceiros do Toshiba SpursEngine presentes no evento:

Exibição da CRI sobre Middleware para o SpursEngine.

Japonês > Inglês

Demonstração da Cyberlink com o software PowerDirector otimizado para o SpursEngine:

A placa para PC´s desktop LeadTek WinFast PxVC1100 com SpursEngine:

Demonstração da Corel com o software DVD MovieWriter otimizado para o SpursEngine:

Japonês > Inglês

Roberto

[Robertoy]

Parceiros do SpursEngine

Japonês > Inglês

Roberto

[Robertoy]

Toshiba´s SpursEngine

Toshiba launched SpursEngine is basically an application optimized for audio and video over the Starter Edition CELL, the official publication of Computex 08 let many users can use fantasy to play这颗chip which uses… For example, analog PS3?… Hei hei…

Because no formal sale of products, manufacturers now have to look at the information provided Zhaobenxuanke, and according to Leadtek who has been held tightly by Xiaodi asked East West asked the poor RD said:

1. Power consumption of about 17 W in about four SPE independent of the core of the clock for the 1.5 GHZ, compared with the CELL, SpursEngine the four SPE deleted into encoder / decoder, the cost savings also reduces power consumption, but For non-image processing of resources will be less than half of CELL, SpursEngine use of the pan-CELL than small.

2. SpursEngine built-Hardware MPEG2/H.264 Encoder / Decoder, so in order to deal with these two specifications movie than with the efficiency of SPE hard to stem the CELL good, and in the handling of non-H264/MPEG2 video and audio signal , On the opening of SPE processing, CELL original intention was to extract the two SPE -> 4 SPE do high-quality treatment -> 2 SPE soft pressure, and SpursEngine is to extract the hardware -> SPE for the screen treatment -> Hardware compression.

3. Currently supports the manufacturers have Corel and Cyberlink, ArcSoft is preparing to join the support, and Toshiba are with the original Adobe Photoshop Plugin on the issue, the original will also provide a complete SDK programmers to the development of different purposes.

4. Will be pushed early OEM, is expected to mature, such as with the software will be pushed beyond the general market.

5. Leadtek the RD used their VISTA SP1, Intel C2D 2.53GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 test machine, a length of about one minute, 16 Mbbps flow for the 1440 × 1080H.264 film, transformed into the same resolution, to flow 25Mbps the MPEG2 format, CPU takes 184 seconds, SpursEngine took just 40 seconds.

It seems that SpursEngine is really worth looking forward to the full product, if the performance of vendors that can really be like, as it often deal with HD video clips of the future users will be able to invest the money in the CPU SpursEngine the top, high efficiency Many, power consumption also can save a lot, but want to expand the exclusive chip market still have to have a strong software support (Think about it AGEIA PhysX it… Section), so… Leadtek want to send a few films SpursEngine to x264 With the Xvid Develop Team? XD

Chinese > English

Roberto

[Evandro]

Que legal Roberto, tem alguma notícia sobre preço dessa belezinha ?

[icefly]

Que tal o X305??

Estimativa na casa dos US$ 1550 ( x R$ 1,60 + 60% = R$ 3968); mas com certeza os lojistas aqui meteriam a faca nessa novidade.

[Evandro]

Meio cheguei não ?

Aqui um desses passa dos 5 mil..

Eu tava pensando só na plaquinha hehehehehe

[bruno2546]

esse qosmio ai é meio rosa..

mas é MUITO bonito, sem duvidas..

se fosse um vermelho mais forte.

[alepta]

Um vermelho "GATEWAY", por exemplo, bruno ? ehehehehe.

[Poyta]

eu acho q n tem so essa cor...problema n é ter esse notebook, problema é ter software q façam funcionar esse novo sistema, por inquanto so umas micharias vão funcionar excepcionalmente bem com esse co-processador

[Robertoy]

Que legal Roberto, tem alguma notícia sobre preço dessa belezinha ?

Não tenho ideia de quanto custará a placa SpursEngine da LeadTek para PC´s desktop, mas imagino que não deverá custar muito caro não.

Quando o chip SpursEngine começou a ser comercializado no início de abril desse ano comentava-se que em lotes, cada unidade do processador sairia por 50 dólares.

Roberto

Toshiba Qosmio G50 (Computer Bild Germany - Video 02:28 min)

Sunday, 03 August 2008, 11:00 clock

Video: manual control in a notebook Toshiba Qosmio G50

In autumn, the Toshiba notebook "Qosmio G50" at a price of around 1,600 euros to the market. In addition to a powerful 18-inch screen and an additional IBM processor for complex mathematical operations waiting for the 4.7 kilogram heavy Qosmio with a real feature: A special technology makes it possible to control the device with three hand gestures. Whether it's a success, has COMPUTER IMAGE tried using a prototype. (Rs)

German > English

http://www.computerbild.de/videos/Faust-statt-Maus-Notebook-von-Toshiba-mit-Gestensteuerung_3189487.html

Roberto

Que tal o X305??

Estimativa na casa dos US$ 1550 ( x R$ 1,60 + 60% = R$ 3968); mas com certeza os lojistas aqui meteriam a faca nessa novidade.

Só lembrando que o Toshiba Qosmio X305 não conta com o processador Toshiba Quad Core HD processor (SpursEngine).

Roberto

[alepta]

eu acho q n tem so essa cor...problema n é ter esse notebook, problema é ter software q façam funcionar esse novo sistema, por inquanto so umas micharias vão funcionar excepcionalmente bem com esse co-processador

Isso é verdade Poyta, eles ainda tem poucos parceiros no projeto.

Mas seria bom se os desenvolvedores de programas como Autocad, Adobe participassem.

[Robertoy]

Claro que com o tempo o número de parceiros para o uso do SpursEngine aumentará, mas no segmento de video (edição/autoração/encoding/decoding), esses parceiros iniciais já são bastante respeitáveis:

-Corel

-Sonic Solutions

-ArcSoft

-Pegasys

-CyberLink

CyberLink Corp. mentioned other possibilities with SpursEngine. Asked about the company’s product plan around HD processing, Dr. Jet Huang, Director of Core Technology Dept., R&D Division at CyberLink, mentioned the recognition is one of key aspects in HD processing. Dr. Huang listed a few software products, MagicSports, MagicDirector, and PowerDirector, as the ones that the company is planning to offer with SpursEngine acceleration. Although Dr. Huang did not give a live demonstration during the session, CyberLink dispatched two application engineers and set up a table-top demonstration with PowerDirector powered by SpursEngine. According to Claire Chang, a Specialist at CyberLink, the video rendering, powered by SpursEngine, is at least as five times as fast as that on an ordinary PC. (CyberLink’s demo PC was also equipped with a SpursEngine evaluation board.)

http://hdpro.jp/events/080402hdpfreport_en.html

Roberto

Segundo a Toshiba após 2008 a tendência vai ser usar o Stream Processor cada vez mais:

O posicionamento do produto "SpursEngine":

As aplicações para o SpursEngine:

Para os próximos anos (2009, 2010) a Toshiba pretende continuar investindo na melhoria do processador Cell B.E. e no SpursEngine, já trabalhando no desenvolvimento do SpursEngine II. Para os 2 casos a tendência é maior performance com melhor eficiência:

http://www.htforum.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1203936&postcount=594

"SpursEngine Developers Forum 2008" - Japonês > Inglês

Roberto

Cell Technology Roadmap (SpursEngine, Cell B.E. e IBM PowerXCell):

http://www.realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?action=detail&id=91674&threadid=91674&roomid=2

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1197894&postcount=16

Roberto

[Robertoy]

Matéria japonesa com o Toshiba Qosmio G50

Qosmio G50 new weapons, SpursEngine rate is too SUGO

August 7, 2008 16:00 update

Page 1

" First, DVD video and other high-definition image quality SD to show up and try to convert. Playback software compatible "TOSHIBA DVD PLAYER" in its own DVD player and features on / off and tried to compare images."

" Upconverted to enable the sharp rocks and leaves and contour is displayed full-screen image is blurred and when you did not. SpursEngine all four core is almost 100 percent capacity utilization and became, CPU utilization rate is disabled from the time remain virtually unchanged. In fact, PC operations are slow and could not confirm such behavior."

"Video editing software compatible "DVD MovieWriter for TOSHIBA" I tried to, result in 8 minutes 15 seconds. On my machine (Phenom X4 9550/DDR2 memory 2 GB / Ulead VisdeStudio 8), the same process that took about 20 minutes to think radically and high performance."

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Roberto

[Robertoy]

Será que esse dvd player Toshiba com Upconvert teria a tecnologia SRT? (Será que o XDE - Extended Detail seria o termo utilizado para a aplicação da tecnologia Super Resolution?...) Vamos aguardar para termos mais informações desse dvd player...

Toshiba XD-E500 1080p Upconversion Extended Detail DVD Player

Preço médio de 150 dólares. (130 dólares em alguns locais...)

[Now for Sale] Toshiba XD-E500 1080p Upconversion Extended Detail DVD Player

Posted August 1st, 2008 by John

With Blu-Ray being a relatively new format, product manufacturers know that most of your movie collection is comprised of standard DVDs. So they’re coming out with more hardware that’s capable of showing you these standard definition DVDs in near HD quality. A couple years ago we started seeing “upconverting” DVD players hit the market which was a big step forward in picture quality and now Toshiba’s XD-E500 takes bigger strides in improving your viewing your experience. If you get a chance to check one out, we’d love to hear what you think.

Key Features:

– 1080p Upconversion

– 24 FPS capability for near HD picture quality

– Detail Enhancement

– Intelligent Color

– Contrast Enhancement

– DivX Certified

http://bountii.com/blog/?p=42

http://www.highdefforum.com/showthread.php?p=669640

Roberto

Roberto

Wednesday, 13th

Toshiba XD-E500, a little more than just a DVD player

By Richard Czapla

After threw their arms in the war of high-definition formats, several thought to see a conversion Toshiba to support Blu-ray. However, the group does not always visibly move in this direction, quite the contrary.

Indeed, the Japanese returned to DVD in the near future on offering the market a player with an upscaling of very high quality, bringing the image of a disk sd than a cake hd.

As a reminder, the upscaling is a scaling up of a signal 720x576i (for example) to fit a higher resolution as 1920x1080p. If the result is virtual (the source being recorded with a low resolution), the image is transmitted more precise. If you want to get more explanation on this feature, please contact us.

Called XD-E500, it will incorporate the processor of the Playstation 3 recently purchased by Sony (what irony!) Will propose this famous upscaling to 1080p and even the possibility of sending a signal 24p (Is it really useful?)

The latest technologies are also part with Detail Enhancement, Intellignet Color and Contrast Enhancement.

Finally, the XD-Toshiba E500 is DivX certified and will be introduced to 149 €.

While it is true that the upscaling provides a better quality image compared to a standard signal (touch of nostalgia with my Pioneer 868), it is still difficult to imagine that such a player is revolutionizing the market today.

Wait still leaving the latter in order to judge for ourselves its advantages and disadvantages.

More info soon.

French > English

Roberto

[Robertoy]

Depois da asia e europa, Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 aterrisa nos Estados Unidos

LeadTek WinFast PxVC1100 ($299)...(Quem sabe começe a aparecer aqui pela Sta. Ifigênia daqui a algum tempo...)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815122013&Tpk=Leadtek%20Winfast%20PxVC1100

Que venha também depois a versão "China in box"...

LeadTek WinFast HPVC1100: O "SpursEngine in the box"

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20090613/etc_leadtek.html

Japonês > Inglês

Análise da Bjorn3D com a placa LeadTek WinFast PxVC1100

Leadtek Winfast PxVC1100

Company: Leadtek

Author: Victor Wu

Released: 2009-06-15

Category: Other,TV Tuners / Video Capture

INTRODUCTION

Multimedia encoding seems to be the rage of in the computer industry. This is partly due to a heavy push by NVIDIA with their GPU accelerated HD encoding. In addition, the widespread of digital contents in all cell phones, digital cameras, digital camcorders, MP3 players, and MP4 players mean that there is a great demand in transcoding one digital media format to other.

Back in 2000, Sony, Toshiba, and IBM formed an alliance called STI to design and manufacture a processor. The collaboration of the three giants in the computer industry is the result of the Cell processor that combines a general-purpose Power Architecture core with streamlines co-processing elements that accelerates multimedia and vector processing application. The most widely recognized Cell processor based application would be the Sony's Playstation 3 game console.

Cell processor is designed in a way that it is flexible. IBM takes the Cell architecture and incorporate it into servers due to its strong performance in the floating point calculation and the processor's emphasizes of bandwidth over latency and power efficiency. Toshiba, on the other hand, takes the Cell processor and incorporates it into HDTV and multi-media environment. The result is the SpursEngine SE1000 stream processor the company has released recently.

Toshiba has a big plan with the SpursEngine as it will be incorporated into various hardware from laptops, desktop add-on cards, digital cameras, and digital camcorders. It is also possible to use the processor in an environment that requires large-volume HD image processing, and hand/face gesture recognition. In fact, Toshiba Notebook PC and Qosmio G50 haves already included such technology.

Our review sample Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 is one of the first desktop add-on cards that takes the Toshiba's SpursEngine's power for digital video encoding to the next level.

CONCLUSION

Today's computer is no longer relies on a single processor to do all of the tasks. The old CPU, central processing unit, is no longer enough to satisfy the different segments of the computer users who may need different computing power for their applications. Thus, parallelism has become a very important. With NVIDIA promoting CUDA technology, we can see that video card is starting to take a greater role in a system and not just for rendering graphics but also functioning as a processor that can do more jobs such as multimedia transcoding and computational calculation.

The Toshiba SpursEngine adds to such parallelism. It has a lot of promise in the digital media decoding and encoding applications. With only a few watts of power consumption, we can see that this little chip has a lot of potential in systems whose main application is multimedia. Thus, for people who have no interested in gaming, it is a good alternative than going with a video card if users only use the computer for HD encoding and never for gaming.

We think that for home-users, gamers, and those who transcoding digital contents occassionally, buying the video card and pair it with Badaboom would be a smarter move than buying the PxVC1100. On the other hand, for professional users who do large volume video transcoding at high bit-rates and have no use for a high-end graphic cards, the Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 is a good investment. With its excellent performance in video transcoding and low power consumption, the Leadtek PxVC1100 would prove to be a very good investment. It would allow professional users to encode a two hours 1080p movie at approximately two hours instead of six hours.

Many of current high-end graphic cards are still designed for gaming purpose. Despite the fact that it is also capable of doing HD encoding and decoding, its power consumption is far greater than the SpursEngine. In a business environment where money often is an important factor, by having a card that is able to reduce the time that is needed for completing a task yet at a fraction of the power consumption, it sure quickly would save the company a lot of money in a very short period of time even if the card is costing $300.

Although this is the first card featuring the Toshiba SpursEngine, the driver and plug-in works flawlessly with the applications we have tested. We did not encounter any driver conflicts nor did we encounter any problems in our tests. The card simply works and does its job.

The biggest obstacle we can see with the SuprsEngine and the Leadtek's PxVC1100 is software support. In order to take advantage of such card, plug-in needs to be written and/or software companies need to incorporate codes into their existing software. We are not sure if software manufacturers are willing to spend time and effort writing plug-ins or reworks on existing software in order to support such card. On the flip side, some of the of today's popular applications, such as TMPEnc, Adobe Premier, and DVD MovieFactory 5.6 have already supporting the PxVC1100. So, at least you won't have to wait for the software support if you have already gotten these applications.

We are trying out a new addition to our scoring system to provide additional feedback beyond a flat score. Please note that the final score isn't an aggregate average of the new rating system.

* Performance 9

* Value 8

* Quality 9.5

* Warranty 9

* Features 10

* Innovation 10

Pros:

+ Excellent performance

+ Low power consumption

+ Super Resolution technology which helps with upcoverting

+ PCI Express x1

+ PCI Express x1

+ Quiet

+ Good software bundle

Cons:

- $300 price tag

- Future software support is uncertain

- HD upconvert only supports a limited input file type

Final Score: 8.5 out of 10 and the Bjorn3d.com coveted Seal of Approval for its excellent performance and low power consumption. It would be a great addition to anyone who has the need to transcode a large volume of HD contents.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1590&pageID=7026

Inglês > Português

Roberto

[Robertoy]

Mais uma análise com a placa Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 (SpursEngine).

Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100

Written by Jeff_Tom

Sunday, 21 June 2009 22:34

As with all of Sony's processors, the Cell processor for the PS3 was widely hyped by Sony prior to the release of the PS3. The processor was to be co-developed by Toshiba, IBM, and Sony and expected to be seen in many more applications than just simply Sony's Playstation 3. This has happened eventually with the Cell processor showing up in various servers and now the Cell processor is being used in additional hardware. Today we'll be taking a look at a video transcoding card from Leadtek which uses the Cell processor, the WinFast PxVC1100.

As mentioned Sony has used the Cell processor primarily for the PS3, IBM has built servers off of the Cell processor, and the third party here, Toshiba, is using it for multimedia uses for consumer devices. This card is a MPEG-2/H.264 transcoding card powered by Toshiba's high-performance stream processor SpursEngine based off a high performance Cell processor with four Synergistic Processing Element cores with emphasis on high performance floating point performance in a multimedia capacity.

What does this all means in laymen's terms? Fast, very fast and also low power consumption. Toshiba states that with a slower Pentium IV processor you can see up to 8x as fast transcoding and with a high-end quad core 4x.

For this card to work though it does require that the app support the SpursEngine and luckily Leadtek includes quite a few plug-ins with the card. They also include the full version of TMPGEnc 4.0 Express which is some of the best transcoding software on the market. It supports MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, DIVX, QuickTime, H.264, DVD-Video,

Blu-Ray, and also we found others such as x264 as long as the codecs for those other containers are installed. It also includes an editor for working with videos and support for Nvidia's CUDA. It'll be the main component of our testing as you'll see later on.

Two other plug-ins are also included, one for Adobe Premiere Elements 7 (this software is not included with the card) which also speeds up encoding and transcoding, and another for Corel DVD Movie Factory 5 which allows for upconversion of material to 1080p. This is called Super Resolution.

Leadtek states that other apps are being worked on for this card by Toshiba and others with Spurs Engine support such as upscaling YouTube videos, video indexing, and Gesture Interface Remote Control. Additionally, an SD is up on Leadkte's site with development tools and tutorials to give programmers a jump start with the SpursEngine if they'd like to add support in their app. http://www.leadtek.com/spursengine/

The card its self is very, very small enough to be low profile. It uses a PCI-E bus but requires more power from a floppy power connector. That said the overall draw is very low, Leadtek claims less than 35W. If you don't have one handy they include a molex-to-floppy 4-pin power adapter in addition to a low profile bracket and the previously mentioned software and plug-ins.

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit with ATI Catalyst 9.6 drivers and GeForce 186.18. TMPGEnc Express 4.0 was the software used for all transcoding.

As you can see with the Leadtek card encoding the full episode of Family Guy finishes almost 1/3 faster than the CPU alone and here Nvidia's CUDA seems to do nothingi TMPGEnc Express.

For this we took a 1080i transport stream of a capture of Jessica Biel's appearance on Letterman and transcoded it into 720p H.264. The Leadtek card finishes more than 3x faster than the CPU or Nvidia's CUDA.

Leadtek also included a 1080p WMV from HDClub and here we see the Leadtek speed ahead of the competition almost 4x faster than the competition.

Obviously another critical component these days is power consumption and here the Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 also excels. While it is higher at idle than just the CPU alone at 121W, 14W above the CPU by its self. However at load it is only 7 watts higher with the CPU and Leadtek card working together to transcode videos. These numbers are taking with the 4770 we had in our normal mid-range system, the GTX 260 raises power consumption quite a bit across the board.

Here is our CPU usage % while transcoding an episode of Family Guy, as you can see there's still plenty of CPU power free with our Phenom II X3 720BE for other tasks such as web surfing and listening to music without slowing things down.

And here is the same episode of Family Guy transcoding without the SpursEngine and the Leadtek card as you can see it is almost 100% full and obviously running other apps such as a web browser will slow down your transcode significantly. We think this is key, not only is the Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 faster than other solutions, it also uses less power and frees up your CPU.

As mentioned earlier software for Corel DVD Factory 5 is also included which allows you to run what Leadtek calls Super Resolution on MPEG-2 videos and DVDs. We saw some refinement in these images with less noise and grain but overall we don't think this is the major reason for buying this card but the transcoding abilities.

Conclusion:

Overall we're pretty wowed by Leadtek's WinFast PxVC1100, it definitely lived up to it's performance claims with transcoding and included a great software bundle, low power consumption, fantastic image quality improvements, and frees up your system so you can use it while not slowing down your transcodes. That said this doesn't come cheap with a suggested price of $299. That is quite a hefty load, as much as a high-end video card and even CPU these days. That said it's obvious neither of those products will give you the gains this card does. If you have the cash and you do a lot of transcoding then the WinFast PxVC1100 should be a card you definitely need to look at.

Hopefully we'll also see some more plug-ins and software from Toshiba and Leadtek in the days to come. Right now they're discussing Adobe CS4 support and we hope that makes it in.

Pricing:

As mentioned the card comes with a hefty premium of $299 but the card definitely delivers.

Score: 99%

http://www.amdzone.com/index.php/reviews/video-cards/11744-leadtek-winfast-pxvc1100

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Roberto