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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 26 for Windows => Topic started by: proton32060 on February 19, 2020, 11:02:22 am

Title: Will a faster video card help?
Post by: proton32060 on February 19, 2020, 11:02:22 am
Hardware:
1.   Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
2.   ASRock Fatal1ty P67 PROFESSIONAL (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67
3.   G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8 Gb) 240-Pin   DDR3- 1866
4.   MSI GAMING GeForce GTX 970 4GB OC

Operating System: Windows 7   64bit

I have a question:

My wife and I were watching a 4k  mkv movie last night on my big monitor and I noticed it was putting a strain on my cpu. Nothing drastic but the fans kicked in fairly high and the cpu was running around 50 degrees Celsius.

I know that won’t kill the machine but I also want to preserve it until I no longer need a computer.
I am 61.
I WILL NOT go to Win 10…ever, so this machine or one like it is as far as I will ever go.

My question is would putting a faster video card in the machine lower the strain on the cpu or is this about right for what I am doing. If a faster Graphics card would take some of the strain off the cpu  I will get one, but if it won’t make much difference I will live with what I have.

I do not play high end games or any GPU intensive tasks, short of watching videos on Media Center.

If a more powerful Video Card would help take some strain off the cpu any suggestions of one that is one to two generations old would be helpful.
Like I said, I do not play high end modern games so I don't need the latest and greatest.

I just use it for youTube, word processor, and playing music and videos with Media Center.
Title: Re: Will a faster video card help?
Post by: Hendrik on February 19, 2020, 11:38:24 am
Your graphics card is a tad bit too old to handle decoding 4K HEVC video properly, so as you noticed the CPU has to do most of the work there.
A newer graphics card would help, since it can entirely take over decoding of the video. A NVIDIA 1060 6GB might be a good choice if you can still find one, its a bit faster then the 970 and supports all modern video codecs. A up-to-date variant would be the 1660, in case the 1060 are hard to find, since they are out of production.

If those are too expensive, you could go with something lower like a 1050 Ti or a 1650, but those are slower then your 970 - although they still offer the full video decoding capability, which should help with your problem.
Title: Re: Will a faster video card help?
Post by: proton32060 on February 19, 2020, 11:47:01 am
Thanks,

How about a
MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti?
Title: Re: Will a faster video card help?
Post by: Hendrik on February 19, 2020, 12:12:06 pm
That would work.
Title: Re: Will a faster video card help?
Post by: tij on February 19, 2020, 12:16:28 pm
Thanks,

How about a
MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti?
that would do too … I have 1070 and its doing fine … though at 1070ti price point 2070 would be better