NVIDIA has began confirming the video acceleration functionality of the 6800 series GPU has a hardware flaw and will never work.
The VP offloads algorithm and image enhancement routines onto the GPU, allowing the CPU to focus on other work.
"The product timeframes for high-end products leave little for regressive error testing. This bug is unfortunate, but not a huge problem"
Unanimous NVIDIA distributor.
Although the problem doesn't effect gaming, features such as Motion Compensation, as used for smooth DVD playback, will be unavailable.
According to a spokesperson at NVIDIA UK the problem can not be rectified by new driver releases, however the PCI-E and other 6X00 chipsets do not have the bug.
So far there has been no official word from NVIDIA.
Users are furiated at shelling out top bucks for what they see as a flawed card. Many have been RMA'ing their units and threatening to turn to ATi hardware.