Games and movies at the same time

[maeldaar]

I'm looking to play games, full screen windowed which ever, on monitor one, and watch full screen videos on monitor two. I need to know if 2gb on a video card would be better then 1gb. xfx hd 6870 2gb is the one I'm looking at.

I usually play games in 1280x1024 as that's the biggest my current monitor will do. The monitor I play the movies on is 1080 and hooked through dvi-hdmi but the vidoes are not always 1080 I guess.

Just looking to save money and wondering if the 2gb will give a performance advantage over the 1gb while doing both of these at the same time.

My system is pretty old but I think it will run any card out there atm, and if it doesn't I'll just upgrade the system early so no worries there.

While I'm at it, what else determines/helps while watching movies and playing games at the same time??

I looked a little but my searching skills are terrible so apologies in advance if this has been answered already and, Thanks in advance for any help I can get

 

[shening]

Unless you have a quad core CPU, that will be your bottleneck if you try to play 1080p movies and games at the same time. The majority of the movie decoding is done on the CPU (VLC player has a GPU acceleration that works somewhat ok but it is in beta ) so the GPU will mostly affect the games performance. Since you are gaming at 1280 resolution I would get the 1Gb version.

 

[Headspin_69]

I'm looking to play games, full screen windowed which ever, on monitor one, and watch full screen videos on monitor two. I need to know if 2gb on a video card would be better then 1gb. xfx hd 6870 2gb is the one I'm looking at.

I usually play games in 1280x1024 as that's the biggest my current monitor will do. The monitor I play the movies on is 1080 and hooked through dvi-hdmi but the vidoes are not always 1080 I guess.

Just looking to save money and wondering if the 2gb will give a performance advantage over the 1gb while doing both of these at the same time.

My system is pretty old but I think it will run any card out there atm, and if it doesn't I'll just upgrade the system early so no worries there.

While I'm at it, what else determines/helps while watching movies and playing games at the same time??

I looked a little but my searching skills are terrible so apologies in advance if this has been answered already and, Thanks in advance for any help I can get

If you want good gaming performance I hope that you have a good quad core CPU to help take care of that Movie on the TV especially if it will be in full HD but really it should all work fine if the game is not the most demanding title.

 

[maeldaar]

I want to play skyrim, only reason I'm getting a new gpu (stupid shadermodel2) I just want to make sure that I'm getting a good card for games/movies at the same time. If the second monitor movie won't be effected at all by the gpu memory at all... Then I shouldn't waste the extra money on something that won't really help me too do that.

So is a 6870 1gb and an i5 2500 quad going to be good to me? where should my money go? lol I hate decisions. been sitting on this for two weeks now.

 

[Headspin_69]

I want to play skyrim, only reason I'm getting a new gpu (stupid shadermodel2) I just want to make sure that I'm getting a good card for games/movies at the same time. If the second monitor movie won't be effected at all by the gpu memory at all... Then I shouldn't waste the extra money on something that won't really help me too do that.

So is a 6870 1gb and an i5 2500 quad going to be good to me? where should my money go? lol I hate decisions. been sitting on this for two weeks now.

No need to think about it any more because if you have the money and you have no need to penny pinch an i5 and 6870 will be a real great combo you will play any and all games maxed out settings no problem.

 

[maeldaar]

You say no need to think about it, is that pro 2gb, or 1gb?

the 2gb is an xfx and if it's the 1gb, cool, the next question is, Which 6870 to buy. lol anyone know of a manufacturer comparison chart? My brain bleeds trying to make these decisions.

 

[Headspin_69]

You say no need to think about it, is that pro 2gb, or 1gb?

the 2gb is an xfx and if it's the 1gb, cool, the next question is, Which 6870 to buy. lol anyone know of a manufacturer comparison chart? My brain bleeds trying to make these decisions.

There all the same just buy the cheapest 1gb 6870 you can find.