noobish question....

[manveruppd]

OK, so why do so many graphics chips have video decoder functions hardwired into the silicon? I regularly play divx videos on an old 450MHz P2 and it doesn't drop a frame, so why should modern CPUs, running literally 10 times faster, need help from the GPU to display films?

Is there sometihng I'm missing or is this merely a marketting gimmick?

 

[Zefan]

It frees up the CPU cycles.

I was talking to someone a while back about media center and they found it very very handy.

 

[BillytheImpaler]

It frees up the CPU cycles.

Yep, it's especially useful when attempting to decode high-resolution videos. My rig with its dual hyperthreaded Xeons at 3 GHz and my X850 XT PE can sometimes struggle when faced with 1080P videos.

Also, generally speaking, a GPU will use less power decoding a video than a CPU will. Everybody wants to save some money in electricity.