http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/ Engadget Comments for Firecoder Blu, Thomson's SpursEngine graphics card, available in December http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/Nov 27th 2008 6:45AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/

]]>Nov 27th 2008 7:04AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/Nov 27th 2008 7:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/Its a transcoding card. It can encode! Not that my video card or even CPU can't do that...]]>Nov 27th 2008 7:36AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/
But, this "Spurs Engine" nonsense is just a cut-down version of the Cell, and is actually about 1/2 as powerful as the Cell in the PS3 -- and the PS3 Cell is old and outdated anyways.

The new enhanced version of the Cell is called the PowerXCell 8i, and it vastly improves the memory support and double precision floating point power... ]]>Nov 27th 2008 6:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/Nov 27th 2008 6:48AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/Nov 27th 2008 7:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/
http://www.elementaltechnologies.com/]]>Nov 27th 2008 7:39AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/But you'll have to encode ALOT of blu ray to make it worth it !!
so, Defenitely useless for a personnal use.]]>Nov 27th 2008 8:13AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/
Also, I find it strange that the number of SPUs is not mention in the specifications. That's kind of important.]]>Nov 27th 2008 9:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/tag/winfast+pxvc1100/

Looks like the same card but leadtek is half the price. We will have to wait and see how the performance plays out with these cards vs cuda. The leadtek claims to be able to encode Four 1920 x 1080p streams at once. ]]>Nov 27th 2008 10:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/Nov 27th 2008 11:31AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/Get some clue, the elemental technologies product is just snake oil. The main bottleneck in H.264 encoding is CABAC and that cannot be parallelized. I don't want to spoil your GPU wet dreams but wake up!
Encoding 4 or 5 1080p videos simultaneously in RT is no small feat (for $600) especially when you consider this product is meant to cater to professional markets - quality is more important than speed here.
Try encoding a 1080p video at the highest quality settings using X264 you will not get more than 5fps on any hardware. Any moron can encode a 1080p with crappy quality at a gazillion fps.]]>Nov 27th 2008 11:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/27/firecoder-blu-thomsons-spursengine-graphics-card-available-in/-MPEG-2 to MPEG-2, H.264 to H.264
-MPEG-2 to H.264, H.264 to MPEG-2

Let see
Nvidia Cuda
Most own Nvidia graphics processing unit
Output resolutions limited to - 1280x720
Output video formats supported – H.264 (MP4) Baseline Profile I think but sure where Level at which can any where from 1.0 to 3.1.
AMD/ATI Stream Technology is useless you must have ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics card gee talk about a big blow to us 3800 user and not much info on it so I geust it about same as Nvidia Cuda spec.

The Cuda platform can not outperform SpursEngine
A Core i7 can probably do in about 3.0x realtime where this card is still 10x faster.

SpursEngine
Any graphics processing unit will do
Output resolutions - 1920x1080
Output video formats supported – MPEG-2/H.264 High Profile, Level 4.1
Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 $N/A but word was a rorund $300
Thomson Grass Valley/Canopus FireCoder Blu cost $600
Thomson Grass Valley/Canopus FireCoder Intra cost $8000 has lots extxa Hardware most likely for Realtime Visual Effect Transitions & 2D/3D Filters and so on.

Baseline Profile (CBP): Primarily for lowest-cost applications this profile is used widely in videoconferencing and mobile applications. No FMO, ASO or RS.= crappy quality.
High Profile (HiP): The primary profile for broadcast and disc storage applications, particularly for high-definition television applications (this is the profile adopted into HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, for example).= high quality
Then the FireCoder Intra which step it up to High Intra Profile. = better high quality ]]>Nov 27th 2008 2:09PM