[tential]

thats plainly wrong. intel does encoding in hardware already(quick sync), which is way faster then anything else in consumer grade hardware.

Yes, but also considerably reduced quality compared to x264 on even fairly low settings. I tried using QuickSync for my Blu-Ray encodes and not only was the quality poor but the file size was large. I'd rather spend 8 hours encoding using x264 CRF 20 than 1.5 hours using QuickSync.

This is very true. QuickSync has shown reduced quality. I wouldn't say considerably, but I also need glasses. Up to the user to tell.