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23-09-2005, 1:30 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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What graphics card for HD acceleration
I've got a AMD 2500XP currently running an old mx440 graphics card. Ideally I'd like to be able to use this PC to run divx, etc, but I also want it to be able to pump out HD material. Such as the T2 Extreme edition and some of the Imax titles and others coming in the near future.
The sensible way to go is hardware acceleration as I can't be bothered to change mobo and cpu again to get to here.
Looking at some site and doing a bit of googling I have come up with the fact there are a few hardware cards out there.
Something like the ATI 9600, Nvidia 6600.
Would either of these be ok as I am trying to minimise the upgrade costs, following the PJ and surround system, and cabling that will be required.
Anyone help?
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23-09-2005, 2:33 PM
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#2 (permalink)
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Depends on how you define 'HD material' .. if you include HD-DVD/BluRay then no current graphics card will do because none support the HDMI/HDCP protection which playback of HD material will demand.
If you're looking at HD WMVs then the 6600 is the way to go as far as I can see, certainly the 9600 has no acceleration capabilities.
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23-09-2005, 2:49 PM
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#3 (permalink)
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Sorry should have made it clearer, want to upscale current DVDs and be able to play WMVHD material. Blueray and all that crap can wait for a hardware player.
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23-09-2005, 2:57 PM
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#4 (permalink)
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Okay, in that case either card will do, I use a 9600 but a 6600 would be better if you want to play HD WMVs I think.
Upscaling is done in software by something like FFDSHOW so the GPU isn't anywhere nearly so important and either will work .. I use a 9600 myself to scale to 1920x1080 to output 1280x720 so performance of the GPU isn't an issue.
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23-09-2005, 4:42 PM
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#5 (permalink)
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by KraGorn
Okay, in that case either card will do, I use a 9600 but a 6600 would be better if you want to play HD WMVs I think.
Upscaling is done in software by something like FFDSHOW so the GPU isn't anywhere nearly so important and either will work .. I use a 9600 myself to scale to 1920x1080 to output 1280x720 so performance of the GPU isn't an issue.
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Sorry don't mean to hijack your thread but ..... was interested in that last comment about scaling. KraGorn can you explain the logic of going to 1920x1080 to arrive at 1280x720 ? Why not output use the 9600 to scale to 1280x720 or is it because you run your desktop at the higher res ???
Anyway back to thread.... I also have a 9600 and it's ok for most wmv stuff but not some of the HD material on the net and definitely not 1080p stuff. Looking to upgrade to 6600gt (or beyond) soonish though.
Ray
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23-09-2005, 5:43 PM
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#6 (permalink)
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Well I have had experience of HD acceleration on ATI based cards, tried it on an X700 PRO and it sucks, you get a super bright grey band across your video when using the hardware dxva acceleraion on wmv files, stay well clear..DXVA is utter crap...you should never use an ATI based card for hardware acceleration of anything except games, for video decoding stick to raw cpu power...I've used ati cards for years, back since the ati rage pro , and DXVA was always turned off on mpeg 2 playback, you get a load of scan lines, anyway I know what i'm talking about, not had much experience with nvidia cards, but for ATI cards, do not use hardware accelration for HD or any video content, make sure you have DXVA off, for best results just use Win DVD 7 as the decoder and media player 10 for dvd/HD playback, works fine...SAY NO to DXVA..., the guys who invented it should be locked up and thrown in jail...I'm happy using VMR for video playback, for mpeg 2 playback make sure you uncheck VMR in the media player options...just for the record I have a P4 2.8GHZ. 2GB RAM, X700 PRO and get around 30-40% CPU usage when playing back 1440*800P WMV-HD content, not bad at all, and that's with no hardware acceleration...
Last edited by meansizzler; 23-09-2005 at 5:45 PM.
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24-09-2005, 2:23 AM
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#7 (permalink)
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Rayfin
Sorry don't mean to hijack your thread but ..... was interested in that last comment about scaling. KraGorn can you explain the logic of going to 1920x1080 to arrive at 1280x720 ? Why not output use the 9600 to scale to 1280x720 or is it because you run your desktop at the higher res ???
Anyway back to thread.... I also have a 9600 and it's ok for most wmv stuff but not some of the HD material on the net and definitely not 1080p stuff. Looking to upgrade to 6600gt (or beyond) soonish though.
Ray
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Defintely like to kjnow why using 1080 to get 720....
I have a 9600. Plays all hidef xvids at 1280x720 just fine but only with vlc player and ffdshow.
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24-09-2005, 9:27 AM
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#8 (permalink)
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In my limited experience, an AMD 2500XP + ati 9600 is borderline for HD playback. I have an 2600XP + 9200, and I can't play all the HD I would like to, it stutters (in VLC, WMP, etc.). Obviously it depends on the bitrate. It's a similar situation with FFDShow. I'm considering upgrading CPU, mobo, GPU,...
The geforce may help, but there used to be a problem with interlaced custom resolutions and geforces. Not sure if this is still a problem, or affects you (it depends on if you intend to use interlaced resolutions like 1080i).
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24-09-2005, 10:59 AM
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#10 (permalink)
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by dan1979
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Looks like just the ticket. Thanks for the link.
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26-09-2005, 9:45 AM
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#11 (permalink)
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The long-delayed ATI R520 chip may be useful, here, as it will support hardware-assisted MPEG-4 decoding. In one benchmark I saw the CPU utilisation went from 90% to 30% when this was switched on.
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26-09-2005, 11:17 AM
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#12 (permalink)
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sapphire ATI Radeon 9550 with 256mb is £45 at ebuyer
and if it has the samsung memory you can flash the bios to a 9600
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