Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100

  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.       Here is a feature list from Leadtek. Four Cell Engines Execute sophisticated video scaling algorithms to enhance video quality Execute other kinds of video algorithms such as image recognition Reduce the computation loading of a CPU processor. Alternatively, a lower performance CPU can be used. Programmable through SDK, allowing creative usage of this product, and fast development of new applications Full-HD MPEG-2 encoder and decoder (Full-HD is 1920x1080 or 1080p) Faster than real time video scaling between the same MPEG-2 formats, eg. from SD to HD or vice versa Fast trans-coding from MPEG-2 to H.264 or vice versa Reduce the computation loading of a CPU processor. Alternatively, a lower performance CPU can be used. Ideal for video editing and authoring Blu-ray Disc content Full-HD H.264 encoder and decoder Faster than real time video scaling between the same H.264 formats, eg. from SD to HD or vice versa Fast trans-coding from H.264 to MPEG-2 or vice versa Reduce the computation loading of a CPU processor. Alternatively, a lower performance CPU can be used. Ideal for video editing and authoring Blu-ray Disc content PCI Express bus (edge connector) High performance industry standard bus in all newer PC and MAC PxVC1100 can be used under Windows, MAC-OS and Linux. Fastest video transcoding process ? Real-time H.264 MPEG-2 , SD HD video transcoding. Super Resolution - Video quality enhanced ?picture resolution up-scaling for HD video, Super resolution makes the video looks more clear and sharper, like the blue-ray quality Best Application ? Pegasys TMPGEnc4.0 XPress accepts the most comment video format with friendly user interface.  Green Product ? less than 35W, low power consumption will not be the burden of your system, and save energy. Less CPU loading ? to free your system by 50% less CPU usage. New tech revolution make you can do other job in the transcoding time forever 1 slot FANsink(Adaptive cooling FAN) Power on : 40% Main chip 85?C : 80% Main chip 90?C : 100% (32dB) Sensor fail or main Chip 96°C : Shut Down             CPU Phenom II X3 720 BE Memory Corsair 6GB XMS DDR2 800 Video Card ATI Radeon HD 4770 Hard Drive Western Digital 750GB Heatsink Zalmaan 9700 Display Samsung 20" LCD   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%         '); //-->

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Tags: hd blu-ray cell ddr2 geforce cuda gpgpu gtx260 linux radeon hd4770 vista whs phenom