NVidia 8300GS

jdinkins wrote on 9/12/2007, 3:35 PM
I have a low budget quad core Q6600 with an NVidia 8300GS graphics card. I know this card isn't great, but shouldn't I still be able to watch in GOOD (using HALF not FULL) quality? I get what look to be interlace lines and things don't play so smooth.

As an FYI I'm pushing a 24 inch Spectre monitor with this card too.

Vegas 7.0.

Take care.

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/12/2007, 6:37 PM
> know this card isn't great, but shouldn't I still be able to watch in GOOD (using HALF not FULL) quality?

Your video card has nothing to do with display rates from Vegas. You could use a $29 graphics card and get the same frame rates because Vegas playback is all software based (i.e., no hardware assist). It also depends on what codec your files use. DV AVI is a lot faster playback than HDV which is a lot faster playback than AVCHD.

CPU speed is the determining factor in Vegas because it is doing all of the decoding and playback is not multi-threaded so it is only using one of your four cores. That means if you have a 2.2GHz quad-core it will perform like a 2.2GHz single core during playback.

Rendering is a whole other story. Vegas will multi-thread the render and use all four cores to cut your rendering time to 1/4. I have a 2.6GHz quad-core and an old Geforce 6800GT I have no problems with playback of HDV files in real-time in PREVIEW mode but GOOD slows down to about 15fps and BEST is about 8fps. DV AVI plays back at full frame rates even on BEST. So it depends more on the codec and CPU speed and not your video card.

~jr
farss wrote on 9/12/2007, 8:13 PM
One other minor point, the interlacing you're seeing is normal Vegas behaviour. It mightn't look all that pretty but it can really save your butt at times being able to see both fields.