Need advice on a good card for video editing

[blak000]

I built a computer for my dad recently, with the following specs:

CPU: Athlon X2 4600+
Mboard: Gigabyte GA-M61P-S3 (integrated 6100 graphics chip)
RAM: 2 GB pc6400 Wintec AMPO
HDD: Western Digital 160GB 7200RPM 3.0GB/sec SATA
PSU: 500W (forgot the brand)

Anyways, he wants to do some amateur video editing. It's a bit of a problem since he has an onboard graphics card, since it's eating into his system RAM. I've read from various sites that the 2 components that seem to matter the most are the CPU and the RAM. These same sites also recommended having a dual-core processor and at least 1GB of RAM, which my dad's computer does. Right now, I have a Sapphire Radeon x1050 256MB graphics card in my own rig (bought it as a cheap solution until I could save up for a decent video card), and was wondering if that would be good enough to give to my dad? If I just threw it into his computer, would it be sufficient enough to meet his video editing needs? He's not doing any 3-D rendering or anything like that. As far as I know, he just uses his computer to compile PcTEX/LaTEX (a typesetting program), run MS Office programs, and occasionally surf the web, the graphics card's only purpose would be to replace the onboard solution (to release the system RAM for editing), and possibly accelerate any video editing he might do.

What do you guys think?

Oh, I would also like to point out that the Radeon x1050 comes in two varieties: 1) a 128MB version that dips into the onboard system memory, and 2) one with 256MB dedicated memory.

If this card isn't up to spec, what would you guys recommend as a good card for video editing? I'm trying to save some cash here, so the simplest solution for me would be to buy a card for myself, and just throw my current card into his computers... instead of buying two new cards for each of us.

 

[Diogenes2]

That card should do fine. Video editing is all 2d, and the main requirement is for the card to support the default resolution of the monitor.

Of course a nice sharp image always helps ... A decent monitor with DVI would be best ..

 

[Fallen Kell]

Your video card has very little to do with video editing. You are doing edits on a system file, which means your I/O path (i.e. disk drives, bus type, bus bandwidth/speed, RAM, and CPU) are what is used when editing video. There are currently no software solutions which utilize the GPU's in video cards at the moment for consumer level devices. If you want to use a Professional Card like the workstation class cards some may offload some things like POV Ray tracing, but that is for graphic generation, not video editing.