Matrox announced a slick new card at NAB this year they're calling the CompressHD. The card is basically an h.264 ASIC that can be called upon by any QuickTime app including Compressor. It looks like it could be a very handy add-on for Final Cut Server installations that do not want to build a dedicated Qmaster cluster but still want to offload the encoding tasks for proxies form the CPUs so they can focus on serving out the app and running the database. Cooler still, several of them can be clustered via Qmaster (though unfortunately not in the same box). Matrox claims to be handily beating 8-core Mac Pros with a single card by a wide margin.

The Intel-Mac-only card will list for $495, is due to hit the street this month. A Windows version of the card will also be available.