This article is from last year. Things have improved slightly in favour of Intel. I've found Intel QuickSync (I had to pay $ to LucidLogix for their Virtu MVP

This article is from last year. Things have improved slightly in favour of Intel. I've found Intel QuickSync (I had to pay $ to LucidLogix for their Virtu MVP software to unlock this functionality since my Sandy Bridge motherboard wasn't one whose OEM paid LucidLogix) usable. Its appeal is for people with dual-core mostly I imagine. Nothing beats quad-core for quality but I've found that I can get 80% of the transcode quality in 4x of the time. Using Arcsoft MediaConverter8, transcoding a 1080p MKV of The Hobbit takes 25 minutes vs 3 hours on my 3.10 GHz i5-2400 quad-core in Handbrake. Unfortunately, this software only supports stereo audio profiles. Handbrake is going to get QuickSync support soon. I tried Badaboom with CUDA 1-2 years ago along with the AMD equivalent and both were ugly ugly pixelated messes that made me go back to Handbrake immediately. This is less of an issue with robust transcode-supporting media server programs like AirVideo, StreamToMe/ServeToMe, Emit, XBMC, PS3 Media Server though I find sometimes I do need to transcode if I'm expecting to be offline somewhere.