I'm planning on building a new Quad Core in advance of the Sony SR11 camcorder being released at the end of the month. My question is, does the video card really matter?

I was looking at the Nvidia 8500 256MB card for $30 after rebate.. or do I really need a high end card? Does SLI actually help for video editing at all?


Thanks!

Depends on the software you are going to use for editing. Sony Vegas, for example, doesn't use the card. Adobe Premiere does. The video card is important for plaback, though. I use a NVIDIA 8800 GTS with 620 MB because I only deal with high def. I would say the 8500 is the minimum you should get. SLI for video editing ? I don't think so. The software must use more than one card and I don't think the most popular ones do. This is for gamers, as far as I understand.

Sergio

Ok.. I will keep that in mind in deciding which software I end up using..

thanks!

i'd say go for that deal. i have the older sony hdr-hc3 using an OLLLLLLD ATI x300 (:p) graphics card and it seems to work just fine for using pinnacle studio 11 or avid liquid 7. little laggy every now and then but the one you're looking at is a great deal and will keep it smooth consistantly.

The video card can be very important in terms of properly displaying the video overlay. With the wrong card you may have poor or on video overlay at al. These problems can be further complicated by the demands of HD.

My understanding is that all 8x00 Geforce series are designed for HD so they should all work great (Alot of people on Slickdeals are talking about having used them for HTPC)

I think I may just pull the trigger.. can't go wrong.. and I would have to think its faster then the ATI 9800 Pro 128MB AGP I've got right now in my old PC.