Graphics Card - Yay or Nay?

[Andrew Howe]

Hi,

I'm thinking about buying a Blu-Ray drive for my PC.
The only thing that's worrying me at the moment is whether my graphics card will let me play Blu-Rays or not.

I'm using an Nvidia GeForce 8500, which has 1 DVI output and 1 VGA output (I use the VGA port).

The 'CyberLink BD / HD Advisor' tool green-lit my graphics card, but after reading posts around the web from people talking about 'HDCP compliance' and HDMI channels and the such, I thought I'd run this past you guys rather than rely solely on the HD advisor.

Thanks

[Iceman_II]

When I built my HTPC I went through many iterations of video cards because of choppy x264 playback (x264 is the "generic" version of AVC), and make no mistake, decoding the modern HD encodes takes PLENTY of processing power! I had a moderate powered processor, so I figured that a high powered graphics card would solve the problem - NOT THE CASE

The problem with decoding HD encodes is that windows has an arbitrary limit on how much of your CPU bandwidth can be dedicated to supporting the GPU, and make no mistake about it, your CPU STILL has to support the GPU plenty with regard to data transfer etc...

ANYWAY... I usually had no problems with 720p x264 encodes, but when I tried to play 1080p x264 encodes, my CPU would tag 50% utilization and the playback would turn to complete crap... even though the GPU and the CPU were NEITHER fully tasked... SO... I replaced my mediocre dual core CPU (somewhere around 2ghz) with a bit more horse power (around 3ghz if I recall correctly) and all the problems went away.

So... the moral of this story is that to do HD playback, you need to make sure your HTPC has enough horsepower all around, NOT just in the GPU.

[glogrono]

The 8500 might work for you depending on the rest of your system. If you want something cheap that will definitelly work, get an ATI HD-3450 ($49.99). This is what I use for my HTPC which has a P4 2.8ghz(1 core, Hyperthreading) 1gb ram, running vista ultimate with Aero features turned off for better performance. CPU is usually at about 35% when I play any blu ray, without any stuttering and the PQ is amazing. Of course, you won't be getting any good 3D game performance. If you will be using this PC for gaming as well, get an nvidia 8800 or above. Good luck.

[jumpyg1258]

Originally Posted by glogrono

The 8500 might work for you depending on the rest of your system. If you want something cheap that will definitelly work, get an ATI HD-3450 ($49.99). This is what I use for my HTPC which has a P4 2.8ghz(1 core, Hyperthreading) 1gb ram, running vista ultimate with Aero features turned off for better performance. CPU is usually at about 35% when I play any blu ray, without any stuttering and the PQ is amazing. Of course, you won't be getting any good 3D game performance. If you will be using this PC for gaming as well, get an nvidia 8800 or above. Good luck.

Wow for some reason I thought you had to have a dual-core processor to watch HD content, guess your PC is proving me wrong. I might have to try this cause I have a computer thats doing nothing right now with an Athlon XP 2800, 2GB of ram, running on XP that should be able to pull it off if you can do it with 1GB of ram on Vista.

[un4gvn94538]

i have an 8500 and a sony bdu x10s drive. works great.

[Obiit]

As long as the graphics card your using accelerates the common HD codecs (VC-1, MPEG4-AVC and MPEG2) then you won't need a hefty CPU. Some but not all variants of the 8500 accelerate the codecs and are HDCP compliant so check with your card manufacturer.

x264 is an open source version of H.264 (MPEG4-AVC) and is slightly different. Hence it isn't accelerated so you need the CPU horsepower for that codec. That codec erm is normally used for none blu-ray disk HD and i'm not going to go into that here!

If your bothered about HDCP then pop over to slysoft and have a look at AnyDVD HD

[maxmcleod]

if you use VGA... what's the point of a bluray drive?
the 8500 is more than able to playback bluray...
but a vga monitor/tv is going to look kind of crappy...
seems like a waste of money on bluray if you plan to use vga...

[Andrew Howe]

Originally Posted by maxmcleod

if you use VGA... what's the point of a bluray drive?
the 8500 is more than able to playback bluray...
but a vga monitor/tv is going to look kind of crappy...
seems like a waste of money on bluray if you plan to use vga...

The best monitor I have at the minute is VGA based. I'll probably buy a new monitor eventually, but for now I only have the money to get me a Blu-Ray drive - I'm only a poor student

Thanks for the replies guys

[maxmcleod]

well if you plan to upgrade the 8500 gt is more than able, can even get 8600 for not much more and it performs a little better

good luck

[glogrono]

Originally Posted by jumpyg1258

Wow for some reason I thought you had to have a dual-core processor to watch HD content, guess your PC is proving me wrong. I might have to try this cause I have a computer thats doing nothing right now with an Athlon XP 2800, 2GB of ram, running on XP that should be able to pull it off if you can do it with 1GB of ram on Vista.

With a card that off loads decoding to te video card, which the $50 ATI HD-3450 does perfectly, your system should be able to do blu ray at 1080p like mine with no problem.