The WinFast PxVC1100 Video Transcoding Card: Worth The Price?

[liquidsnake718]

So lt me get this straight, the software encoding relies on purely the CPU only? Or does it make a difference with a decent GPU. I did take note that using the GTX260 that Cuda was disabled, but does this make a difference?

Its good to see a hardware vs software comparison chart. Its also nice to see reviews on video/transcoding hardware other than GPUs and processors. Would this card also work without a GPU or would the onboarad GPU have to be at a certain mhz?

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]mariushm[/nom]...it would certainly not be able to produce Blu-Ray compatible streams for example, which x264 can.[/citation]

Please read the review, I do talk about blu-ray output. This card is quite capable of HD.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]liquidsnake718[/nom]I did take note that using the GTX260 that Cuda was disabled, but does this make a difference?... Its also nice to see reviews on video/transcoding hardware other than GPUs and processors. Would this card also work without a GPU or would the onboarad GPU have to be at a certain mhz?[/citation]

CUDA can not be used with this particular encoding software (TMPGEnc.)to accelerate a straight video-to-video transcode. HOWEVER, CUDA *can* be used to accelerate 'filters' if they are applied to the video. but this isn't aples to apples so we left it out of our CPU vs. Spursengine comparison.

As far as CUDA, we are in the early planning stages of a GeForce vs. Radeon stream computing face-off.

As far as the Spursengine, it has absolutely nothing to do with the graphics card and doesn't rely on it at all.

 

[mariushm]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Please read the review, I do talk about blu-ray output. This card is quite capable of HD.[/citation]

Yes, it is capable of HD in the sense that it can encode videos at 1920x1080, and maybe the streams it creates would even be accepted as home made blu-ray disks. However, the streams it creates would not pass the validation tests used by manufacturing plants and by professional software products which are used to prepare the ISO (or whatever else format) images sent to the Blu-ray manufacturing factories.

Even the open source x264 has problems doing this and just recently there's a patch in beta testing that manages to pass these validations tests successfully.

There's been a lot of discussion on forum.doom9.org about this card and the overall consensus is that it's not worth it - at the same quality settings this card has to offer, x264 reaches the same speed on an overclocked Intel quad core. With an i720 or better, it leaves it behind. Not to mention you can get a workstation board and use two Xeons to get it running even faster, as it would use all 8-16 threads the two CPUs offer.

And I have to repeat, the lack of settings for the actual encoding make it worthless.

See this threads if you wish:

forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=142918
forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141070
forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=147665

 

[Anthonynyc]

I must be missing something because everyone seems to be comparing this card to the cpu and gpu (cuda) as if all 3 can only be used independantly, why?
If you add (key word being add) this card to a system, would that be extra processing power added to the encoding process in tandem with the cpu?
And once different software can access gpu in tandem with cpu and spurs engine, then you would have video transcoding being equally distributed amongst all 3 processors, that would be ideal, no?

However, even as it stands, say you do need to apply a few filters to a video during transcoding, then it is my understanding the filters would be handled by the GPU currently, the rest by the spurs engine and possibly cpu to some degree also, and the cpu would still have extra resources to do other tasks while the videos are encoding in backround, thus not stalling all workflow. And you could probably continue editing say in an editing program and not be slowed down at all, as the cpu would have its power available.
So it seems a little more useful than it is made out to be by some readers, IMHO.

I also would like you to test the newer versions of Corel video Studio with this card and see if it allows concurrent transcoding between the spursengine and ATI Stream processors on Video cards and cuda, which they claim work together, or does that software limit it to one or the other or only filters like the TMPENC 4?
Thanks so much, I am debating investing in this card because I have lots of DVD quality MPEG2 files i would love transcoded to modern AVCHD format and upconverted to better resolution HD as this card claims it can do, at he same time saving me disk space by going to a more modern compression scheme. And for all those saying the formats are limited, well basically AVCHD is the only format you should be transcoding to now anyway, it is the clear winner as the defacto standard of future.
So converting to that from dvd is perfect and also going from HD video captured in AVCHD format in modern camcorders quickly and easily back down to MPEG2 so you can burn regular DVD disks is useful also.
Just my opinion.

 

[Anthonynyc]

This is just a comment on this blog format in general. I went through all the posts and was clicking the thumbs up or down at the end of the comments by mistake! This is like the voting fiasco in florida where the candidates names didn't quite line up.
All these plus or minus ratings are now skewed because of my and how many others mistakes?
Please try and redesign this blog design so it is clear as day which rating goes to which comment, for first time users. Thanks and sorry for my mistake. I apoligize to everyones comment that I incorrectly messed up. Sorry.

 

[MaizeNBlue2]

Very nice review. I really appreciate the info. One of the other members pointed the product out to me. I've decided against purchasing one and will instead be building a new rig.

 

[kelemvor4]

I must be missing something because everyone seems to be comparing this card to the cpu and gpu (cuda) as if all 3 can only be used independantly, why?

Normally you would not use both, you would use cuda (gpu) or cpu or an addon card like this. Since we don't have a direct comparison between the two yet, I cannot say how cuda would compare to this card; however on my gtx 295, cuda encoding is a little better than 10x faster than CPU based encoding last time I checked.

An easy way to do a comparison would be just to encode the same video clip with simmilar quality settings on all three pieces of hardware; albeit with different software. Then compare the output video quality and the time it took to do the encode...

 

[Anthonynyc]

Normally you would not use both, you would use cuda (gpu) or cpu or an addon card like this. Since we don't have a direct comparison between the two yet, I cannot say how cuda would compare to this card; however on my gtx 295, cuda encoding is a little better than 10x faster than CPU based encoding last time I checked.

An easy way to do a comparison would be just to encode the same video clip with simmilar quality settings on all three pieces of hardware; albeit with different software. Then compare the output video quality and the time it took to do the encode...

Thanks for the reply, but this is what I meant, comparing encoding on all 3, cpu, gpu (cuda) and the add on card independantly, yes all 3 can do the transcoding, so what which is a little bit faster, my point was isn't it faster using all 2 or 3 together?
That should be the point to getting this add on card, not to replace the cpu and gpu for transcoding but to add to it.
so you can really increase the PC's power.

I have used software encoders that can access gpu and when it is activated it works with cpu, off loading some of the load to gpu, but not replacing the cpu entirely. So say it takes 45 minutes to transcode using the cpu alone, and 45 minutes using the gpu, togehter it takes like 15 minutes using both.
I have a quad core cpu so with multithreading, it can encode using 8 cores, and is just as fast as my cuda gpu (G92).
What I was hoping was an add on card like this that would also add to the processing of the transcoding workload, off loading and even amount from cpu and gpu. This way all 3 in a PC share the task equally, then you have something.
If this card can not share the workload with cpu or cuda, at least one of the 2, it is worthless, you might as well just use cpu and cuda.
Why replace one of them? The add on card needs to help both existing encoding engines not replce one or two of them.
IMHO anyway.
I am ready to buy one today but only if it increases my speed by say doubling the speed i get now with cpu and cuda together.
And I can do a 30 minute 720 x480 H.264 transcode from mpg2 now in 12 minutes using cpu and cuda together.
If getting this card replaces both then the spped will be about the same, and my cpu and gpu will idle while I transcode, no?

 

[gradius2]

What about more than a single PxVC1100 card ?!

 

[doktorow]

well, I got that card because I needed it... a lot of here in the comment are going paralleled with the topic. this is for video rendering, and makes it much faster, I have reached from 5x-8x faster rendering times. now for me it is not the same if I get 100 bucks in 8 hours or I get it in 50 min...
I have cuda as well, gtx 460, but that is not for rendering... however it can help the rendering process by doing the filtering work... like de-noising and color corrections. also the processor does not go idle, it works on around 50 percent. this depending on system...
this means while I am rendering a movie, I can still work in after effects without problems, on a dual cored system... before this card it has no chance of something like that. I am not making advertising for Leadtek, there is out the matrox compressHD and the firecoder blue (firecoder uses same chip from toshiba) just those are more expensive ones and each is limited to 1 or two softs... firecoder goes with edius platform and matrox with media encoder. Leadtek card goes currently with premier/media encoder and Tmpgenc express. and has an open stuff for programming to anything...
and it has an available price.
of course to uplaod your daily bullshit top youtube, you don't need to buy any of this... neither for gamin worth spending bucks on a video card.