newbie question about video card

[lordmajax]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum so if there's a more specific forum I should direct this question to please let me know. I have a 64mb NVIDIA GeForce4 mx 440 with AGP8X. I was wondering what others opinions are about this video card. I don't have alot of money but would a better video card improve the quality of downloaded movies? I don't play video games on my pc so it wouldn't be that beneficial to go upgrading big time. I have a Dell 4600 in case that helps.

[bigshotceo]

If you're not playing computer games, then your video card doesn't matter at all. When it comes to movies, the only things that affect your quality (assuming you're using a good software player) are your monitor and the movie itself.

[lordmajax]

Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.

[g_shocker182]

Yeah that DivX.Rip.KaZaA.TGP.AvI.YourMovieHere probably won't look good anyways. You don't download good quality movies, you buy them.

[teegee420]

Around 4-5 years ago I was running an Athlon 700 with an ATI Rage 128 32mb video card. I remember that when I bought my first DVD-ROM drive I was really disappointed with DVD playback. That all changed when I upgraded the GPU to a Radeon DDR card, which had an onboard DVD decoder. The difference was like night and day. So in some ways the graphics card does matter but really only when dealing with mpeg-2.

[bigshotceo]

Around 4-5 years ago I was running an Athlon 700 with an ATI Rage 128 32mb video card. I remember that when I bought my first DVD-ROM drive I was really disappointed with DVD playback. That all changed when I upgraded the GPU to a Radeon DDR card, which had an onboard DVD decoder. The difference was like night and day. So in some ways the graphics card does matter but really only when dealing with mpeg-2.

IIRC the reason that your old ATI card played DVDs poorly was because there was hardware decoding. Nowadays most computers are powerful enough to do all of the decoding in software, which is why it would look the same no matter what. Yes, if you use a hardware decoder the card would matter, but assuming you're running at around 500mhz or higher you can do the decoding in software entirely.

[teegee420]

I agree with what you're saying for the most part. However on my current system(XP2000), there is still a noticeable difference when I use a strictly software only player like Zoom Player to play mpeg-2, versus using something like Cinelplayer or Power DVD which both utilize hardware acceleration. Software only just doesn't compare in my opinion.