How to tell, before buying, if a given graphics card will play Full HD video?

0

I am looking for the cheapest video card that would be capable of smooth playback of Full HD (1080p) video on a Full HD screen.

An answer by @Mikhail on a related question briefly mentioned that:

performance of video playback is largely dependent on the video accelerators present [in the card]

Is this true? Could anyone expand on that?

Are there any benchmarks or specifications that could be used to tell if a given (low-end) card can play Full HD video smoothly? Benchmarks I encountered are oriented towards computer games, and using them to evaluate video playback performance may be less-than-optimal, I imagine.

Dominykas Mostauskis

Posted 2014-06-05T14:45:23.503

Reputation: 312

1The question is very vague. What OS will you use the card with? What device? There might be some geographical availability restriction. Also, I cannot think of a graphic card built in the last decade, that does not fupport 1080p – Bruno9779 – 2014-06-05T14:52:39.337

Could you explain how the OS influences this? The card that I am trying to replace is GeForce 7600 GT from 2006, and it is not capable of smooth 1080p playback. The OS is XP and Windows 7. Geographic position is Eastern Europe. I'd like to add, that I don't feel like the question is vague; after all I'm not primarily asking for a specific suggestion as to what card to buy, but rather guidance on how to choose. – Dominykas Mostauskis – 2014-06-05T15:17:07.547

I ask about the OS for compatibility. Some HW is still badly supported on Linux. – Bruno9779 – 2014-06-05T15:18:48.033

There is a walth of links about this on the net. This for example: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/354538-33-cheap-graphics-card-1080p-hdmi-audio. Keep in mind that this question is opinion based and it ma¡ight get flagged and closed

– Bruno9779 – 2014-06-05T15:21:16.710

The short answer is that any new card can support 1080p playback. The actual answer is complicated, and depends largely on which codecs and environment. – Jason – 2014-06-05T15:29:24.017

Answers

3

Normally video decoding is done on the CPU and not the graphics card. However, modern graphics cards can handle some of the load in order to free up the CPU. Look for whether your graphics card supports DirectX Video Acceleration (and what version) and VDPAU.

However, on a reasonably modern system, even if one of these is not present, you should have no trouble with video playback. The oldest system I have running right now has an AMD FX-55 CPU, which is over eight years old, and that handles 1080p h.264 playback without any problems.

user55325

Posted 2014-06-05T14:45:23.503

Reputation: 4 693

Asked: 2014-06-05T14:45:23.503

Viewed: 490 times

Active: 2014-06-05T15:26:10.130