jmke

ATI's 2900 XT lacks the hardware decoding engine ATI built into the rest of the HD 2000 and HD 3000 series, so its performance (or lack thereof) establishes a comparative baseline for the other video cards we tested. CPU usage when paired with the 2900XT is also a useful reference point for anyone planning to re-purpose an older video card with limited (or non-existent) hardware decode capabilities. While our 3GHz Conroe Core 2 Duo handled it ably enough, performing the entire decode process in software required a significant amount of CPU power.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...vs-nvidia.html

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