Software to take advantage of the power of graphics cards?

[TheBigCheese]

Morning folks

I've taken advantage of OCUKs great deal on the 8800GTX and have one on route as I type.

I'm going to be using it for games (of course) but I've been reading about how it's processing power can be used for other things.

One program is apparently called 'Magic Bullet' and can be used for applying visual effects to camcorder footage - great for me as I do that a lot.

Anyone know of any other software that graphics cards can make use of?

 

[Darkwave]

Computer games (goes without saying) and 3D Mark 06 (for benchmarking.)

If you're talking about GPGPU usage (i.e. Folding @ Home) then I don't think the 8800 Series is optimised for that. They seem to love ATI for their designs though.

 

[steve258]

F@H will support 8800 it just needs time to develop the software. The current Ati GPU client also took many years of development.

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the replies, interesting to read about F@H but I was thinking more in the imaging / video areas.

Anyone else know of any applications that use the power of a GPU?

Cheers

 

[peetee]

surely with a card that beasty you also have a decent CPU? which would probably be sufficient for doing the visual/special effects on videos?

 

[lay-z-boy]

adobe reader 8 uses the gpu to render the pages, cad does as well.

 

[TheBigCheese]

surely with a card that beasty you also have a decent CPU? which would probably be sufficient for doing the visual/special effects on videos?

Yep it's pretty beasty - C2D 6600, but I've found that when it comes to video encoding etc you can never have too much power as it takes so long!

adobe reader 8 uses the gpu to render the pages, cad does as well.

Huh! I'm surprised at that, you wouldn't think that reader would have to need to utilise the GPU really. I've been reading up on the Adobe pages, and though I can't find specific mention of Nvidia on there it does seem that the Premiere Pro range of video editors can make use of the GPU.

 

[lay-z-boy]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/testimonial_adobe_acrobat8.html

 

[Big.Wayne]

One program is apparently called 'Magic Bullet' and can be used for applying visual effects to camcorder footage - great for me as I do that a lot

Sounds funny! let us know how u get on.

Anyone else know of any applications that use the power of a GPU?

um is there anything other than 3Dmark?

But seriously I don't know of anything other than what already been mentioned (F@H etc), hmmm maybe they will start using the GPU for physics within games, aparty from that I dunno ???

 

[marc2003]

oh please. the only reason anyone would drop this amount of money on a graphics card is to play games on it. end of.....

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the adobe news link!

Shhhhh - I have to justify (to myself) why I've spent so much on a graphics card...besides if it has business purposes I can put part of the cost down as a business expense!