I just thought I'd throw this in for fun.
Is gpu acceleration really as good as they make it out to be? I'm talking mostly about video decoding here. Yes, it uses less cpu power, and the gpu can probably do it more efficient and faster than the cpu, but here's the catch.
The gpu draws more power unless you have an energy efficient card. And most high-end cards are real power suckers. For example, a 9600GT can eat up to as much as 100W. That's a lot.
So I made a test. I decoded a 720p H264 movie using the cpu and the gpu.
And in average, the gpu used ~4W more than when using the cpu.
There you go. Don't believe in everything they say. Don't blindly rely on gpu acceleration.