We think CUDA is a really great idea in theory. However, if you have a quad- or 8-core system of recent vintage and aren't doing much of anything other than Premiere Pro, the speed advantages provided by the card might not make it a worthwhile add-on to your system. The $1,999 retail price and $1,799 street price are both very high. Also consider that this much money could certainly buy some or all of a new quad- or 8-core workstation.

While the hardware is very stable and undeniably cool, it's not for everyone. You have to decide whether the benefit is worth the huge price tag that you'd pay now. (Just wait a few months, though, and it'll probably get cheaper.) If you're working on jobs that have to get done now, particularly those that are heavy in After Effects or Photoshop, it's worth a very hard look.

Premiere Pro Render Times: 1440x1080, 23.976fps, 1-pass VBR CPU: 0:01:07; GPU: 0:00:3
TMPGEnc 4.0 XPressRender Times: 007 (1080 MPEG) 28:10 w/ hardware, 32:35 w/o; 069 (720 WMV) 38:53 w/ hardware, 38:21 w/o; 070 (720 WMV) 46:01 w/ hardware, 45:45 w/o; 072 (1080 QT) would not encode w/ hardware, 1:39:01 w/o

• Solid hardware
• Massive Photoshop performance gains

• Extremely expensive
• Performance gains less noticeable for video encoding

Whether the performance gains will be worth it to you depends on what you need to do and how much money you have just lying around.

Charles Fulton is Videomaker's Technical Editor.

NVIDIA Corporation
2701 San Tomas Expy.
Santa Clara, CA 95050
www.nvidia.com
Price: $1,999