If you've been to your local movie theater lately you've probably noticed a resurgence in 3D films with the biggest blockbuster so far being Pixar's "Up" and the band U2 even releasing a concert film entirely in 3D with many more on the way. Some television shows and even sports games have even been broadcast in 3D. Luckily the technology has come a long way in the years since it last fadeda way and things are looking better than ever. This may not make for better content necessarily, but there is definitely a new major push from film and television studios to market this and get 3D in their products.

When 3D glasses were popular video game technology was brand new and nothing more than a few pixels running across the screen. Obviously games have come light years since then with games such as Crysis offering photorealistic quality graphics and massive immersive 3D worlds. Nvidia, the other major player in the graphics world, seeks to also ride this new 3D wave with their Nvidia 3D Vision technology this time bringing gamers into the current 3D craze.

I'm definitely one to keep up with the latest tech, it may not be always what's powering my system or what I use at home, but technology news I follow daily and obviously write about. Yet somehow Nvidia's GeForce 3D Vision went under my radar likely due to many new AMD products being launched at the same time such as Phenom II, Socket AM3 motherboards, and new graphics cards from ATI. I also hadn't read of it in any recent reviews and to be fair to my self, we haven't received as much Nvidia hardware for review lately as AMD. It's fair to say then that I had no bias or expectations for Nvidia 3D Vision coming into a meeting recently at QuakeCon and was a little surprised to see the 3D glasses they were showing off which I had heard of but hadn't seen anyone use as of yet.

We kicked things off with a game that has received rave reviews lately, Eidos's Batman: Arkham Asylum, which currently has over 90% score on average. The game is a third-person action-stealth game developed by Rocksteady out for consoles now and the PC in two more weeks and looks to be one of surprise hits of the year.

As soon as the game loaded the first thing I noticed was how Batman's cape trails him perfectly when he runs and leaps out from the screen at you. The cowl and the flowing cape are some of the iconic symbols of Batman and here they're done excellently. Batman also has a variety of gadgets at his disposable to take out fiends and the in-game heads-up display is perfectly removed from the rest of the scene to give depth. It is obvious this game has been tweaked heavily and is an excellent showcase for Nvidia's technology. During some moments you do come out of the 3D experience from the pre-rendered cinematics but for the most part the 3D is incredibly immersive and exciting. I remember moving back a bit as a bolt flied towards the screen as Batman removed a grate to sneak around Arkham. That seems like a minor detail or not very exciting but in action it is very, very cool.

As exciting as it was to watch, Arkham Asylum was only demoed to me and I didn't get any hands-on time to try it out in 3D. When I picked up Resident Evil 5 on my own things really got fun. I had played the demo previously on the XBox 360 and this was the same section that I played with Nvidia 3D Vision on the PC. I definitely had fun with the game, though I'm more a first-person shooter fan, it didn't quite pull me in to try the full game on the XBox. This same section of the game played with 3D was right away much more intense. These glasses definitely work and can make a very good game that much more exciting when playing. Not only did zombies pop out the screen but my character had definite space and everything had an extra level of definition to it that you just can't get watching a 2D screen. And since Resident Evil 5 uses a lot of in-game cinematics they also looked fantastic. It might be hard to believe but I think immersive is the key word for this technology when it works, it really gives you a much better feeling for what's going on in the game world. Unfortunately I can't recall many specific  graphics details from my experience but I can say it worked and was a blast to play. At no time did I experience headaches or nausea seen with other 3D systems. Resident Evil 5 is launched for the PC also a few weeks from now and seems to be a very good port.

This won't be an article going in depth on how the glasses work as I only had about 30-45 minutes with them but let me give you a quick overview on what you need for Nvidia's 3D Vision to work. First, there are actually two Nvidia solutions and the one I got to check out was the higher-end Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision but Nvidia also offers Nvidia 3D Vision Discover which requires your regular 3D glasses that are basically free at this point, a recent GeForce graphics card, and Windows Vista or Windows 7. You can read more about that here at Nvidia's site.

The Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision kicks things up a little bit with the first requirement being a monitor which supports 120Hz refresh rates to draw to images for each eye onscreen, a GeForce graphics card and a fairly powerful one as you will lose speed using this, Windows Vista or Windows 7, and the Nvidia 3D Vision kit from Nvidia which goes for about $200 online. This comes with high-end stereoscopic glasses with wireless IR technology built in, separate nose pieces for the goggles, a bag and cloth to clean the glasses, transmitter for the glasses which hooks up to your computer, various cables and converters, and stereoscopic photo viewer and for movies.

Obviously $200 isn't something to sneeze at but by its self it isn't that bad. Unfortunately, the price of some of these LCD monitors at 120Hz is considerably more than those which run at 60Hz. You can pick up a 22" Viewsonic which runs at 1680x1050 resolution with 1,000:1 contrast ratio and the 120Hz spec for $299. A comparable 22" Viewsonic is $179 at 60Hz. Samsung also offers a monitor with similar specs, the 2233RZ at a similar price. None of these are 1080p monitors which you should know if you're looking for a monitor that supports full HD though 1680x1050 is still a decent resolution and higher than 720p, those looking to buy a system like this probably are gamers who also want 1080p support. There are some other solutions including high-end HDTVs and projectors, Nvidia has the full list here as well as system requirements.

The other problem is that although hundreds of titles are supported, it seem as if some other websites impressions of the glasses who had more time to write a full review show that when it works great it is spectacular and makes gaming better but many times it doesn't work well or requires you to turn off graphic settings. There also appears to be a performance hit from Tech Report's findings.

Overall, I have to say my first impression of Nvidia's GeForce 3D Vision I came away very impressed. The technology worked great, at least on the games I played, and definitely added to the fun and the immersiveness. This could be one of the most important gaming peripherals to be released as I'd say when it does work it really helps push you into the game world such as with the Wiimote and much more than the rumble packs that showed up first over a dozen years ago and are now ubiquitous. The problem is, it appears, is though my hands-on time was fun that on many titles there are still problems with 3D and it's still early in the technology's days. I'm sure these bugs can be worked out and it's to Nvidia's benefit to do so as to not create a stigma around the technology. The other major problem is of course cost factor which if you only need to buy the glasses once, $200 isn't cheap but it might be worth it to some. The requirement of a special monitor and the price and lack of choice though do hurt today.

All of that said though, I'm not doom and gloom about this. The technology is fresh but already tremendously impressive when working and though it may not happen soon, it's likely that 120Hz output on monitors will start to become more and more standard as films are also released in 3D on Blu-Ray for the home market. I'd also be shocked if one or more of the next-generation consoles doesn't support some 3D technology, though new consoles probably won't be released for 3-4 years. How soon and how cheap 120Hz monitors will get no one can say at this point but it is imperative for 3D to become successful. I think this is much more exciting than PhysX my self, having seen that and tried 3D this is easily the more fun and rewarding technology. ATI and AMD, if they aren't already, should definitely be working on some solution of their own to 3D as it may not matter now but better to be up to speed rather than being caught without it if the technology does start to catch on. Those looking to pick this up though will probably be Nvidia fans and those with some extra cash, for everyone else it probably isn't quite ready for prime time and it may burn too much a hole in one's pocket book. But if you can afford it and don't mind all games not working perfectly, this looks to be a very, very fun development. Congrats to Nvidia for pushing some new technology in the PC world.

You can pick up both the glasses and monitor for $551 from  TheNerds.net

As with all of Sony's processors, the Cell processor for the PS3 was widely hyped by Sony prior to the release of the PS3. The processor was to be co-developed by Toshiba, IBM, and Sony and expected to be seen in many more applications than just simply Sony's PlayStation 3. This has happened eventually with the Cell processor showing up in various servers and now the Cell processor is being used in additional hardware. Today we'll be taking a look at a video transcoding card from Leadtek which uses the Cell processor, the WinFast PxVC1100.

As mentioned Sony has used the Cell processor primarily for the PS3, IBM has built servers off of the Cell processor, and the third party here, Toshiba, is using it for multimedia uses for consumer devices. This card is a MPEG-2/H.264 transcoding card powered by Toshiba's high-performance stream processor SpursEngine based off a high performance Cell processor with four Synergistic Processing Element cores with emphasis on high performance floating point performance in a multimedia capacity.

What does this all means in laymen's terms? Fast, very fast and also low power consumption. Toshiba states that with a slower Pentium IV processor you can see up to 8x as fast transcoding and with a high-end quad core 4x.

For this card to work though it does require that the app support the SpursEngine and luckily Leadtek includes quite a few plug-ins with the card. They also include the full version of TMPGEnc 4.0 Express which is some of the best transcoding software on the market. It supports MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, DIVX, QuickTime, H.264, DVD-Video, Blu-Ray, and also we found others such as x264 as long as the codecs for those other containers are installed. It also includes an editor for working with videos and support for Nvidia's CUDA. It'll be the main component of our testing as you'll see later on.

Two other plug-ins are also included, one for Adobe Premiere Elements 7 (this software is not included with the card) which also speeds up encoding and transcoding, and another for Corel DVD Movie Factory 5 which allows for upconversion of material to 1080p. This is called Super Resolution.

Leadtek states that other apps are being worked on for this card by Toshiba and others with Spurs Engine support such as upscaling YouTube videos, video indexing, and Gesture Interface Remote Control. Additionally, an SD is up on Leadkte's site with development tools and tutorials to give programmers a jump start with the SpursEngine if they'd like to add support in their app. http://www.leadtek.com/spursengine/

The card its self is very, very small enough to be low profile. It uses a PCI-E bus but requires more power from a floppy power connector. That said the overall draw is very low, Leadtek claims less than 35W. If you don't have one handy they include a molex-to-floppy 4-pin power adapter in addition to a low profile bracket and the previously mentioned software and plug-ins.

Here is a feature list from Leadtek.

Four Cell Engines
Execute sophisticated video scaling algorithms to enhance video quality
Execute other kinds of video algorithms such as image recognition
Reduce the computation loading of a CPU processor. Alternatively, a lower performance CPU can be used.
Programmable through SDK, allowing creative usage of this product, and fast development of new applications


Full-HD MPEG-2 encoder and decoder
(Full-HD is 1920x1080 or 1080p)
Faster than real time video scaling between the same MPEG-2 formats, eg. from SD to HD or vice versa
Fast trans-coding from MPEG-2 to H.264 or vice versa
Reduce the computation loading of a CPU processor. Alternatively, a lower performance CPU can be used.
Ideal for video editing and authoring Blu-ray Disc content


Full-HD H.264 encoder and decoder
Faster than real time video scaling between the same H.264 formats, eg. from SD to HD or vice versa
Fast trans-coding from H.264 to MPEG-2 or vice versa
Reduce the computation loading of a CPU processor. Alternatively, a lower performance CPU can be used.
Ideal for video editing and authoring Blu-ray Disc content


PCI Express bus (edge connector)
High performance industry standard bus in all newer PC and MAC
PxVC1100 can be used under Windows, MAC-OS and Linux.


Fastest video transcoding process — Real-time H.264 <-> MPEG-2 , SD <-> HD video transcoding.
Super Resolution - Video quality enhanced —picture resolution up-scaling for HD video, Super resolution makes the video looks more clear and sharper, like the blue-ray quality
Best Application — Pegasys TMPGEnc4.0 XPress accepts the most comment video format with friendly user interface. 
Green Product — less than 35W, low power consumption will not be the burden of your system, and save energy.
Less CPU loading — to free your system by 50% less CPU usage. New tech revolution make you can do other job in the transcoding time forever

1 slot FANsink(Adaptive cooling FAN)
Power on : 40%
Main chip 85’C : 80%
Main chip 90’C : 100% (32dB)
Sensor fail or main Chip 96°C : Shut Down

Our test system was Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit with ATI Catalyst 9.6 drivers and GeForce 186.18. TMPGEnc Express 4.0 was the software used for all transcoding.

 

As you can see with the Leadtek card encoding the full episode of Family Guy finishes almost 1/3 faster than the CPU alone and here Nvidia's CUDA seems to do nothingi TMPGEnc Express.

For this we took a 1080i transport stream of a capture of Jessica Biel's appearance on Letterman and transcoded it into 720p H.264. The Leadtek card finishes more than 3x faster than the CPU or Nvidia's CUDA.

Leadtek also included a 1080p WMV from HDClub and here we see the Leadtek speed ahead of the competition almost 4x faster than the competition.

Obviously another critical component these days is power consumption and here the Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 also excels. While it is higher at idle than just the CPU alone at 121W, 14W above the CPU by its self. However at load it is only 7 watts higher with the CPU and Leadtek card working together to transcode videos. These numbers are taking with the 4770 we had in our normal mid-range system, the GTX 260 raises power consumption quite a bit across the board.

Here is our CPU usage % while transcoding an episode of Family Guy, as you can see there's still plenty of CPU power free with our Phenom II X3 720BE for other tasks such as web surfing and listening to music without slowing things down.

And here is the same episode of Family Guy transcoding without the SpursEngine and the Leadtek card as you can see it is almost 100% full and obviously running other apps such as a web browser will slow down your transcode significantly. We think this is key, not only is the Leadtek WinFast PxVC1100 faster than other solutions, it also uses less power and frees up your CPU.

As mentioned earlier software for Corel DVD Factory 5 is also included which allows you to run what Leadtek calls Super Resolution on MPEG-2 videos and DVDs. We saw some refinement in these images with less noise and grain but overall we don't think this is the major reason for buying this card but the transcoding abilities.