Best graphics card?

[velocity]

I'm buying a new computer and want to get suggestions on the best graphics card for video editing and specifically for VideoStudio 11.5.

I am looking at NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512MB.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums,

That's much better than I use, an GeForce 6200..

Editing video is a bit different than gaming. It does not require a powerhouse video card. What you're looking at should be sufficient.

I'm sure others, more tech-minded will respond with a better technical view..

[Devil]

Virtually any graphics card will be OK for video editing, as it is a 2-D application. I used a prehistoric Matrox G-200 with 32 Mb RAM until a few years ago, when I had to change it because it was AGP-1 and incompatible with an AGP-4 m/b, when I moved to a G-550. I changed this a few months ago when a new m/b didn't have any AGP slot. My advice is buy the cheapest EXCEPT I would suggest that whatever you do buy should have the possibility of hooking in a second monitor; you may wish to add this later, even if you start with one.

[babdi]

As said in earlier post Graphics card do not make a difference for editing.
However I found my 6200 LE ,512 MB card made my videos(MP4) less jerky when viewing in preview window.
Again having a good graphic card is a boon when you use softwares like bluff titler which supports pixel shader version 3.0

[martythebrit]

The GeForce 8 series is on the way out, you may want to look at the GeForce 9 series, the 9600GT is very affordable.

[bob733]

Now me.... I go with the Boomers. That is, the biggest and baddest. Why?
I will tell you why. Years ago I went to an IBM 2 week course to learn something for my job. During the course, the IBM instructor actually said they were in the business to "sell iron" (bigger and bigger computers).

That is why their Operating Systems (which I was installing on my job), were huge. Consequently, customers that ran those Operating Systems had to buy/lease larger IBM computers.

So, with those words of wisdom (many years ago), I still to this day, buy the biggest of everything (just about).

I have found it to help me as I load up my system with larger and larger applications, multiple screens, external hard drives etc. Running Photoshop, BluffTitler, VidieoStudio 11, and other hogs on multiple monitors do run better (in my mind at least), with very significant Video cards.

But, I also realize what is good for the goose, may not be good for the gander.

Bob

[Ken Berry]

Not to mention golden (or is that iron?) eggs -- to thoroughly muddy the analogy!!

[martythebrit]

I'm not spending $500 plus on a video card, no way no how!!! Not that I wouldn't like too, I just can't justify it... yet!!

[jpal]

I'd qualify what's best with some questions, specifically:

1. Do you intend to produce HD content, particularly VC-1 and AVC?
(if so, then specific graphics hardware support for these is important, to minimise cpu load and get smooth playback)

2. Do you produce any content using 3d modelling software, or would you intend to do so in future? (e.g. Poser, Bryce etc). 3d OpenGl speed is usually the critical factor here.

As others have said, for the edit application itself, lots of graphics power isn't important. Multi-screen is and probably all modern cards will support 2. And in any case, I'd try to get a balanced system with at least 2 cores and loads of disk, rather than spend loads on the latest and greatest graphics card - fortunately the mid-range is now better than it was last year.

[ronstew]

1. Do you intend to produce HD content, particularly VC-1 and AVC?
(if so, then specific graphics hardware support for these is important, to minimise cpu load and get smooth playback)

Would VideoStudio 11.5 be able to take advantage of such features? If so, what features am I looking for? And does somebody have a list of some cards that have those features?

I am hoping to buy a new computer and an HD camcorder in the near future, so for me, this is just information gathering at the moment. Within a year, I expect to be burning Blu-ray discs, if any of my friends have Blu-ray players by then. What I do know is that my ThinkPad T41 takes about 25 minutes to render a four-minute clip from my small digital still camera to AVI for Youtube. A little more speed would be a good thing, and for HD, a lot more speed is going to be necessary.