Best card for video decoding

[plethora87]

Hello,

I've had a Radeon HD 5570 for a few years, and am finding more and more lately that I can't play HD content (720 or 1080) without choppiness. I assume it's because the card doesn't do newer codecs and hardware.

Hoping for some advice on what I should replace it with. I don't play games -- video is it. I'm running Win7 x64 with a Core i7 920.

Thanks!

 

[tarmc]

thats very odd, the card should be enough to do hd playback without any issues, but if you are looking to upgrade what price range are you looking at?

 

[plethora87]

Most HD videos are okay, but some have issues. It seems to be getting more common, so I figured maybe I was underpowered.

I'm open to any price range at this point. Exploring all the options.

 

[tarmc]

well, if you dont do any gaming i would guess a 7770 or a gtx 650 would be more than enough to do video decoding, and both are pretty cheap also

 

[KingFatty]

As an interim solution, could you disable hardware decoding, and instead use your core i7 to decode the video, e.g., using a "software decoding" setting in whatever video player you are using?

 

[Elixer]

Hmm, tarmc is right, that card should have no issues with playing 1080p video.

What media player are you using ?

 

[plethora87]

I usually use VLC, but I also try MPC when a particular video acts up. They both seem to perform the same with a given video.

Any better ones out there?

 

[bononos]

Try lowering some video quality settings in ccc like noise reduction. I'm not sure if your app can override ccc settings as well in its own quality settings.

 

[FalseChristian]

VLC is simply the best. Grab a GTX 650 TI for $120-$140 and your problem is solved. You'll also be able to game a little, too. Just remember: The GTX 650 Ti does NOT support SLI.

 

[bononos]

There it is, found it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hqv-2-radeon-geforce,2844-2.html

 

[Krynj]

I have the same card (well, the 2GB Eyefinity version) and I've never had any issues whatsoever playing HD content.

Stuttering/choppy playback can sometimes point to a bottleneck elsewhere. How much RAM do you have? Do you have a regular HDD or an SSD? Could be an I/O issue caused by slow read/write speeds to the pagefile. If you've got enough RAM to allow for it, try disabling the pagefile and see what happens.

 

[KingFatty]

Also, maybe your computer's internal components are snuggling in a nice warm blanket of dust to retain lots of heat, causing everything to get all out of whack when anything is done that generates heat.

 

[plethora87]

3GB of RAM with an SSD, and mostly dust-free internals.

Just tried a choppy 1080 video in VLC while watching CCC. CPU activity goes to 90+%. This would seem to confirm the GPU is the bottleneck, but I'm at a loss as to why if it should have enough horsepower. Any thoughts?