Question Will a GPU improve 1080p streaming (youtube etc) on older pc with i5-2300 (hd 2000?)

[Coyle]

I have an older pc that came with HD6450 that I replaced with a GTX1050ti but it's really just being used for watching YouTube videos.
Is there any noticeable improvement with the 1050ti or could I just put a HD6450 back in and get basically the same quality?
(I didn't keep the 6450 but can pick one up pretty easily, or similar card like a GT730 etc. The MB only has VGA port.)
If it doesn't really matter, I could get better use out of the 1050ti in a different pc for light gaming.

 

[igor_kavinski]

6450 codec support



1050 Ti supports newer codecs like H.264.

You can pick up a cheap Geforce 1030 and get the same media decoding capabilities as the 1050.

NVDEC - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You can see from the Wikipedia page that anything less than a 1030 would be a bad choice for media consumption.

 

[Quintessa]

Is there any noticeable improvement with the 1050ti or could I just put a HD6450 back in and get basically the same quality?

All of them support hardware video decode (H.264), which is what YouTube uses for 1080p streams. You won’t notice any difference. Your Sandy Bridge iGPU (HD2000) is too weak for smooth playback, but any dedicated GPU from the HD6450 upwards handles it fine.

 

[igor_kavinski]

All of them support hardware video decode (H.264)

Doh! Typo in my post. Should've been H.265.

1050 Ti supports newer codecs like H.265.

*FIXED*

 

[Spjut]

Youtube started defaulting to VP9 a couple of years ago, which the GTX 1000 series support, but the i5 2300 might be fast enough to decode it anyway.
When I tried a HD 5000 series card last all major browsers except Firefox had hardware acceleration turned off by default due to a too old driver.