do I need to spend big $$ on a gfx card for quality 1080p playback? (1 Viewer)

etheesdad

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  • November 8, 2008
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    just built a media pc and then made the mistake of going out and buying an full-hd tv. While the picture quality is fantastic, my 2.4ghz AGP machine does not seem to be up to the task of playing anything 1080. It stutters hopelessly with live tv, and the 1080 movie trailers are hopeless too. (Ok it wasnt really a mistake - I love the tv, but it looks like necessitating spending more money on the HTPC - DOH!)

    So it looks like i need some better hardware. I priced a new agp card - will be about AU$140 for a 3650 radeon. At that price I can probably upgrade the motherboard and cpu to a dual core (x2 4000) and run a pci-e card.

    So, my question is - If im running a 2ghz Dual Core CPU, do I have to go all out on the GPU to get good playback on full hd? I saw a 3450 on ebay today going very cheap. The reviews say they are good for htpc's.. anyone got any suggestions about whether its necessary to put something with more grunt in? I was thinking also about an 8500gt, which seem to be going pretty cheap. Do I need more power than that? Will spending more money give better playback results?

    I want the machine running as cool as possible. A fanless gpu is appealing because of the low-noise aspect. Is this a smart idea? or am i better off going for something with its own cooling?

    oh and one more n00b question - is the hardware requirement for playing high-def tv the same as the hardware requirement for playing blu-ray?

    Does the amount of ram (256/512) make any difference?

    Does ddr2/3/4 matter for video playback?

    Most of my experience with GPU's is with gaming. Im new to the idea of using one just to play videos :) Any experiences/suggestions/links much appreciated....
     

    revs

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  • February 1, 2007
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    A ATI 3450 should be fine - not sure about the prices for your part of the world, but they are very cheap here (~£35 GBP).

    As for CPU, I have a AMD X2 3800.

    So far I can play anything. Any h264 content is accelerated by the gfx card, anything else is handled buy the CPU - all seems fine.

    As for GFX card RAM and DDR etc, I dont think it will make a huge difference - depends what the price difference is - it should not be too much of a difference between 256 and 512
     

    ziphnor

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  • August 4, 2005
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    As mentioned above an Ati 3450 should do just fine, it has all the video related bells and whistles of the higher end versions.

    However, (and this might be a pretty big however), you wont be able to playback all h264/VC-1 material with hardware acceleration. It should work fine with for example Bluray, but online high-def media (trailers for example as well as movies of more questionable origin) are commonly encoded in a manner that is incompatible with hardware decoding. Getting WMV (with for example VC-1) hw acceleration is also problematic (or at least it was for me).

    I gave up on the 3450 in my old HTPC, turned it into an MP server, and then bought an AOpen MP45-DR barebone (which can also do hw deaccel with its IGP) with a 3.0Ghz CPU, and went for software decoding using CoreAVC instead. As an added benefit, this also gives me working subtitle rendering for MKV files. Admittely it is a bit noisy under high CPU load, but it plays anything without trouble.
     

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