I've just learned something that compels me to publish a major correction to our review of the Radeon HD 2900 XT GPU. I got the clear, distinct impression from AMD's presentations, statements, and conversations with me at its Radeon HD press event that its new UVD video decode acceleration logic was present in its entire lineup of Radeon HD graphics chips, and I relayed that information to you in our review of the product, promising to follow up with tests of this feature at a later date.

True to my word, I set out yesterday to test HD video decode acceleration on a Radeon HD 2900 XT using an HD DVD drive and a version of PowerDVD supplied by AMD for such purposes. To my surprise, CPU utilization during playback on our Core 2 Extreme X6800 test system ran between 40 and 50%, well above what one would expect from a solution with full HD video decode acceleration.

Read More