Outboard video hardware to reduce CPU load?

[mesayre]

Hi folks,
I'm interested in decreasing CPU load when working with hi-res video. I wonder if any of you have experience working with an outboard video interface that at least partially handles the video decoding/rendering on hardware(for instance, the V4HD, if I'm understanding the docs correctly), and what sort of performance improvement I might expect if I sink some cash into something like that.

The v4HD is actually overkill for my needs, but I think it's the only MOTU unit with hardware acceleration, which I think is what I need. I'd consider a graphics card upgrade as well. I don't have the computer specs handy but can get them if that'll help.

EDIT: Though my profile says my primary OS is windows, in this case it's for a Quad Core Mac Pro.

Any thoughts?

Thanks all,
Mike

[bralston]

The new DP8 video engine harnesses the GPU as to not tax the CPU for video rendering. So…upgrading your video card would be an improvement. It seems like the folks with the older video cards tend to have the most problems with video in DP8. Just my observation. Also…Dave Roberts at MOTU has repeatedly shared that using H.264 codec in DP8…(and OSX even) is currently the least taxing codec as everything is optimized for that.