Help if need Graphic Card or not

klrman · Sep 26, 2014

I'm building a pc for my brother. He doesn't do any gaming, just youtube videos in HD and general surfing.

If I give him 8GB RAM and an i5-4690 with win-7 64 bit, would this be enough to run a 23 inch monitor at 1920x1080 in HD for youtube without any lag, or should I get some type of graphic card?

He has satellite internet, so I was concerned that maybe a graphic card would be a good idea to speed things a little. I just built my wife a pc with i5 and a msi GTX 660 and even though we are in town with fiber optics, the internet speed improvement was very significant over our old system that only had 1.5gb of ram.

Just want to know if a 2GB card would really help things along.

jerryvaberry · Sep 26, 2014

He probably will not need a graphics card, intel's integrated graphics are pretty good. And hd for youtube is more dependent on your dl speed. I dont think a graphics card will help that.

klrman · Sep 26, 2014

So for the system I built my wife, was it the extra ram that speed up the dsl connection more than the card itself you think? Before she had a pentium 4 with 1.5 gb of ram and now she has i5 with 16gb ram and a 2gb card.

Entomber · Sep 26, 2014

your computer itself won't have any effect on the speed provided by your internet. It will, however, affect rendering time and loadtimes for pages which has the illusion of speeding up internet speed, but it doesn't really do anything.

A graphics card ONLY processes graphics, it has no effect whatsoever on internet speed. The 2GB you see is for VRAM, and VRAM holds information needed to process graphics faster.

klrman · Sep 26, 2014

Thanks, wasn't sure about that. Wouldn't that mean though if he was watching youtube videos in hd, that the card would make the video flow seamlessly instead of the jerky video he is getting now, or would the 8gb of ram take care of that alone?

Whammy · Sep 26, 2014

klrman :

For seamless 1080p YouTube viewing, 8Gb of RAM and integrated graphics on the 4690 will be perfect.

klrman · Sep 26, 2014

Hey, thanks Whammy. Saves me $200+ for a card he would never need or use!

Whammy · Sep 26, 2014

klrman :

No problem, happy building!

klrman · Sep 26, 2014

would an i3-4150 do the trick too? I just noticed it's $100 cheaper than an i5.

Entomber · Sep 26, 2014

It will be slower for sure, I don't know what you are asking by if it would "do the trick"

jerryvaberry · Sep 26, 2014

klrman :

For browsing and watching web videos, the i3 is perfectly capable. And if he really does only those two things, you wont notice any speed difference.

klrman · Sep 27, 2014

Yes, that is what is basically what he is doing. He sometimes uses a photo editing program but that program was fast enough on his old pc so not worried about that really. Thanks for the advice.

Whammy · Sep 27, 2014

Actually what was aforementioned about the i3 being slower is not true. Both 4th gen i3 and i5 are built on the same architecture and use very similar cores, the difference is that the i5 has 4 cores whilst the i3 has 2 cores (4 with hyper-threading). This means that it will be just as fast for single threaded applications but drop off once you start multi-tasking. This should NOT be an issue however with what he will be doing as it doesn't seem like much.

klrman · Sep 27, 2014

Thanks for the clarification. The most he does is have a bunch of browser tabs open at the same time and some instant messenger on at the same time. That wouldn't really be considered multi-tasking would it?

Whammy · Sep 28, 2014

klrman :

No, that isn't really multi-tasking

Ninjamilez · Sep 28, 2014

klrman :

Cut down to 4GB RAM
Change to an i3 but keep the i5 if you don't mind paying extra.
A GPU would be a good idea but you don't need a gaming GPU like something from the GTX series.

A GT 740 would be plenty, especially if you got the GDDR5 one and not the DDR3 one.

Ninjamilez · Sep 28, 2014

Also, I'd recommend a sound card but only if you have a semi-decent set of headphones or speakers.

Nothing super expensive just something that has a better analogue output than onboard. The Creative Z would be good. Get the OEM version, it's cheaper. You'll need to download the drivers, though, since it won't come with the installation CD.

You don't really need one but it would improve the experience.

klrman · Sep 28, 2014

That's some good info there, I'll look into the cards right now, thanks Ninjamilez, I appreciate your help

Without starting a new thread, would you happen to know a reasonably priced Blu-ray playing software Tried VLC but couldn't get it to work.

Ninjamilez · Sep 28, 2014

klrman :

Hmm, that's odd. Before looking into other software try uninstalling it, restarting your PC, running CCleaner, restart again and then re-install it along with the K-Lite codec pack.

If that doesn't work PowerDVD is very good. You do have to pay for it though.

Since I'm only really familiar with PowerDVD and VLC media player I don't think I can help out very much with free software that allows playback of Blu-Ray discs. Google something like free blu ray playback software.

Here

http://bit.ly/1mDqd5P

klrman · Sep 28, 2014

Thanks, will give that a try. It doesn't many any sense to me though that I have all these Blu-ray movies that I paid for and somehow, someway, someone decides that I can't play these movies on my PC without paying another fee. I think the world has gone nuts!

Help if need Graphic Card or not

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