Is My Video Card Enough?

[C1]

My 3.06 P4 system uses an ATI 9600se video card (128mb memory). It works fine, of course, when driving resolutions at 1440 x 900. Would this card be too underpowered to drive an HP LP2475w (1920x1200) display - not for games, but for movies? If it cannot, then how about an LCD native at 1600x1200?

Thanks in advance.

 

[yottabit]

I think it depends on what kind of video you are talking about. I don't think it should make a difference for anything hardware or CPU decoded such as playing back a DVD or WMV file. As long as the video card can drive the resolution in the first place I don't think it's age or amount of VRAM would hold the computer back. However if you are going to be playing back HD content like 1080p video your cpu will not have enough power to decode that and your video card does not have the GPU acceleration for H.264 that a newer card would.

Especially if you are going to play back HD flash video you will have issues. You may be able to get away with 720p but 1080p will be out of the question. For smooth HD flash playback you would need either a much more powerful cpu or a graphics card compatible with GPU acceleration of flash.

But to answer your question, I'm not 100% sure but I think all the same videos that play fine at 1440x900 should play fine at 1900x1200. I would think it's really the bitrate of the video that matters