Possible to use hardware(h.264) accel on 2nd video card but display on first card?

[Helevitia]

I want to add a 2nd video card to handle h.264 acceleration since my primary video card can't do it. I have a second PCIE x8 slot. Just wondering if this is even possible?

[Dr Mordrid]

What card are you using? Most of ATI's (Radeon X1000 series w/Catalyst 5.13 and up) and NVIVIA's (some GF 6, most GF 7 & 8 w/latest drivers) cards have h.264 acceleration already, though the latest models are better at it.

[Helevitia]

You are right, some cards do support H.264 Decode Accelaeration.

The higher end and flagship cards do not support H.264 Decode Acceleration with IDCT and CAVLC/CABAC which I think means it will not hardware accelerate Bluray/HD-DVD. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Dr Mordrid]

Might want to read this;

Link....

and this;

Link....

[Helevitia]

Ahh cool, I think this answers my question...

AMD and Nvidia chose similar approaches to adding video processing to their GPUs. In both cases, their high-end DirectX 10 GPUs have the same video processing hardware as their last-generation parts, but augment this dedicated hardware by using the unified shaders to improve video quality. The new stuff is reserved for the entry-level and mainstream cards. The apparent thinking here is that the horsepower of the shader units built into the high-end cards, like the GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS line and the recently released Radeon HD 2900 XT, can take up the slack from the absent hardware video processing blocks. Also, these high-end cards go in high-end systems with CPUs powerful enough to handle some of the HD bitstream decoding with power to spare, while home theater PCs and less-expensive machines with slower CPUs utilize lower-cost, lower-power graphics cards.

Thanks Doc

[Dr Mordrid]

N/p

[Helevitia]

hmm, just noticed I posted this in the lounge. My apologies. Please move it at will.

[Marshmallowman]

been kind burnt twice on this with nividia.

6800gt video accelleration hardware present...but faulty so never enabled in drivers.
7800gt no video accel hardware.

this time
8600gts(for htpc) hardware accel enabled and working