Video Card recommendations

[Seeker47]

Up until fairly recently, I've mostly run basic business app.s, internet stuff (browsers, media players), basic video-related app.s like Shrink or Decrypter, etc. Nothing that made particularly high demands of a PC's graphics hardware. At the same time, for a few things -- like attempting to play hi-def trailers at the Apple Quicktime site -- it was immediately clear that the video-chip built-in to my last MB (with its 32MB of memory) was not compatible and could not begin to cut it. I haven't bought a video card in years, the last one being an old Matrox dual-head, which I liked a lot.

Now that I'm looking at building a new system, and thinking in terms of not limiting myself with something inadequate, I'm wondering just what sort of video card is quite sufficient for hobbyist (not pro) level video editing, your more demanding video app.s (whatever they might be), or being able to play hi-def material ? (I'm probably not going to change the computer monitor just to see those clips in hi-def; I just want to be able to play the video without it crashing the hardware.) So, I'm looking for recommendations. Is 128M of onboard memory sufficient, or do you need 256 ? I've seen graphics cards being sold with over 512M, but that sounds like overkill for anyone who is not a gamer, and I'm certainly not. I've seen graphics cards that cost $500., which seems ridiculous to me. Also, I'd prefer to avoid anything that generates too much heat and requires really aggressive cooling solutions. What brands / models would you recommend that fit these parameters ? Dual-head would also be nice, but is not an absolute requirement.

Related questions:
Is Matrox still around, or have they gone totally over to the Mac ?
Does a board like the Hauppauge 250 or 350 double as a regular graphics card, and if so, how well does it fit the qualities mentioned above ?

[jagabo]

6 months old but a place to start:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3047

I use an nVidia 8600GT that I bought around 6 months ago for ~US$130.

Matrox is still around with multihead display cards. They're not competitive in the 3D market so you don't hear much about them. I don't think they have hardware h.264 and VC1 decoding.

Hauppauge PVR-250 and 350 cards are for video capture. You'll still need a graphics card for the display.

[jman98]

You'll be disappointed to find that out throwing your money at a video card is right now a waste of money. HD stuff in WMV, Divx and MPEG-2 doesn't need it. H.264/X.264, which could use the help, in my experience can't really offload the job of processing to the video card, so the CPU is actually more important for HD playback.

Hauppauge does NOT make video cards. They make some great TV capture cards (I own the PVR-350), but that's all they do.

If you want to get a new video card as part of a new system build, unless you are a gamer you don't really need anything state of the art. 256 MB of memory on a video card is fine. And do be sure to use PCI Express in whatever card you get. AGP is old technology and not supported on the newer, better cards. You'll have an upgrade path with PCI Express at least, should it ever reach the point where the freakin' card can actually offload H.264/X.264 processing from the CPU.

[oldandinthe way]

jman98 pretty much has it.

Beyond that I'd advise visiting other sites other than Quicktime for your hidef trailers. Anything associated with Quicktime is likely to yield poor results in the Windows enviornment.

[edDV]

What OS are you planning?

For XP use 512MB minimum and 1GB nominal.
For Vista use 1GB minimum and 2GB nominal.

What kinds of compressed video are you planning to play?

MPeg2? Get NVidia 7600GT or better
MPeg4? Get NVidia 8600GT minimum for now but for HD H.264 or VC-1 you will want more later.

What kinds of video do you want to capture?

If SD analog cable or baseband the Hauppage PVR models are favored.
If HD ask more.

[GMaq]

@seeker47,
I have recently improved my graphics cards to use the 3D Window managers in Linux as well as increasing performance under Windows, I am not a gamer either. I have had good luck with NVidia FX5500's w/256mb they are cheap ($67.00CDN) and for the most part have worked great for both platforms and are capable of moderate gaming as well. Of course the cards already mentioned are better, but more expensive and perhaps overkill for your needs. Best of Luck!

[jagabo]

H.264/X.264, which could use the help, in my experience can't really offload the job of processing to the video card

You need a player that supports the new API for this. PowerDVD is the only player I know for sure has it.

[painkiller]

Hello,

I hope this is a related topic.

I am putting together an Intel Quad Core system based on the Asus Striker (Intel SLI) motherboard.

My basic concern is that I would like to still use XP Pro, rather than Vista at all.

So my bottom line question, because of not using Vista - should I stay away from DX10 graphics boards?
What might someone recommend for me, please and thank you.

[Considering what I have read in various threads so far, I am inclined to believe I should stick to DX9.0c boards. True?]

[edDV]

Hello,

I hope this is a related topic.

I am putting together an Intel Quad Core system based on the Asus Striker (Intel SLI) motherboard.

My basic concern is that I would like to still use XP Pro, rather than Vista at all.

So my bottom line question, because of not using Vista - should I stay away from DX10 graphics boards?
What might someone recommend for me, please and thank you.

[Considering what I have read in various threads so far, I am inclined to believe I should stick to DX9.0c boards. True?]

Not really related at all. Better to make a new topic.
But don't worry, DirectX 10 cards are backwards compatible.

[glockjs]

i think your level of usage you might be interested in this article: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=10448

if you wanna game at all you'd wanna look more to the $200-$300 range(3850, 3870, 8800gt) but im pretty sure from what you're saying the cards in the article will pretty much take care of you.

[painkiller]

Thanks for the answer, EdDV.

But my concern is with regard to the use of such a card with WInXP.

In my various readings, I thought that WinXP can't use DX10, just Vista.

(Now I'm sure I understand that on the PC - I would install DX9.0c... but these new graphics cards that are DX10??? Are these integrating DX10 on the graphics board? Or implying use of DX10 as it is installed within the OS on the boot drive? This is where I am a bit confused. That and my readings say that Microsoft has no intention to upgrade/update WinXP to be able to use DX10.)

Eh, so I'm looking around but there are sooo many cards...

Which, when I noticed this topic, I thought I would start here at least.

[edDV]

DirectX 10 is only available in Vista
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX#DirectX_10

DirectX 10 is backwards compatible to DirectX 9c

DirectX 10 cards like the GeForce 8800 have drivers for for XP and DirectX 9c.

[painkiller]

Thank you.

[RabidDog]

Cards that are labelled as dx10 are really "dx10 compatible". Meaning that the software designers can rely on them having certain features available (mainly hardware acceleration of hi-def codecs), over and above dx9 cards. However some dx10 chipsets are incredibly puny (intel and other integrated graphics) and you would be far better off with a decent dx9 discrete card. Dont try to think DX9 Bad (7900GTx2) vs DX10 good (INTEL igp x38) first one gets you 140fps in COD3, second gets you 3, maybe 4 fps.