Video Card Question (1 Viewer)

I always thought that the memory built onto video cards were mainly used in game playing but does it effect the quality of video playback from say a DVD or a avi file?
IT seems as though now many cards are in excess of $200 or $300, what does this buy you from your average $40 - $100 card.
I dont play games but I do have a s video connect to my TV and split screens and sometimes use my TV to playback video.
How much improvement would I get on the TV playback?
Thanks
Grant

for decent video play back a 32mb card will do you fine, although i would recommend at least a 64mb card. you would definitely see an improvement over integrated video in a motherboard. you would also see a system wide performance improvement because of the freeing up of system resources.

the higher end cards have dvi-outputs and the ability to put out component. some even have hardware decoding for mpeg-2. but if your application will only support s-video and composite due to your display a budget card in the area of 40-100 bux will do you fine.

i am an ati person, but nvidia cards have a rep of being better for dealing with video via mpeg-2 and avi.

edited for the typo that scott l caught

Just for S-Video playback and I'd recommend something uber-cheap like a Radeon 7500/8500. If you want more, I see a bunch of 6600GT's in the $140 range on Newegg. That's a solid card with mpeg-2 decoding capabilities.

I have a Radeon ATI 7000 series with 64mbwhich I guess is considered old and cheap.
I have it connected via s video but the TV does have HD component inputs. Since I have both taken up I would need a switcher to have my computer hooked up and I would rather keep it that way for now.
Would a more expensive card help video playback on my computer monitor....in other words what would a 6600GT buy me saying I kept my TV hooked up via s-video?

Diallo B, almost all low end cards now adays have hardware mpeg2 decoding. The high end cards you speak of will definitely all have it.

To answer the question really depends on what software you are using. Normal decode of SD quality MPEG2 video doesn't require too much frame buffer memory, but any software that takes advantage of the video processing and deinterlacing capabilities of VMR9 can chew up a lot of memory very quickly - especially if you are playing HD sized video.

Well I just Newegg'ed a few upgades to one of the computers in the house and decided to go with a an MSI GeForce 6200TC. It's less than $50 and even has all the PureVideo features.

http://nvidia.com/page/purevideo.html

So I guess the answer is yes, you can get a decent video card for HTPC in the ~$50 price range.

Not to rain on your parade but the 6200 is actually a bit crippled in the PureVideo department.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html
It is missing some of the best high-end features like the 3:2 pulldown correction.

Also note the 6200 "TC" model uses system RAM for 3D textures when gaming.

ah k, good to know. I actually just bought the card because it was the cheapest name brand PCI-E model available. No gaming either, just a work computer so I hope I'm good.