[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

Is my graphics card (nVidia 8300 GS) capable of playing HD content?

TIA,
Ollie.

[hAvAAck]

you got a link for the specs?
And what do you mean capable? If it has DVI hookup it will output HD video, if it has HDMI hookup it will output HD video and audio

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

DVI supports HD, but that doesnt necessarily mean that what I view on my screen will be HIGH definition, even if it plays the HD content.

[Macmac508]

Yes it would be capable of playing high definition video and such. The max resolution of the card is something like 1920x1200 so it will play the video.

Not much good for gaming though. Isn't the 8300GS one of those "dell exclusive" ones?

[hAvAAck]

Yes, it is Dell exclusive, hence the lack of specs available via google

[Macmac508]

Found these ..... might be helpful

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

I don't game with my PC, thats why I chose a low spec one, then I got worried as I use my PC mostly for media editing and viewing.. And soon I'm getting an HDDVD/DVD/CD/Blu-Ray Drive.. so I'll want to get the quality out of it.

So thanks for your help :D Ollie.

[Macmac508]

Yeah well you should be able to view HD content fine.

Video editing, particularly HD content is a very resource hungry activity though. The video card isn't the biggest deciding factor here though. Things like rendering HD Video use a lot of CPU and RAM usage so bear in mind it may well be slow when editing these.

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

More CPU is next on my list actually... as you may see from my sig I only have 1GB, yet I run Vista.. which is runable but I stupidly ignored advice that 2GB would be best and decided that "1GB minimum to run Vista" meant that that would be great..

Oh well its not too bad..RAMs permanently about 85%... but both processors seem to stick around 25% each.. unless I do many complicated things at once.. or something stops responding..

[Macmac508]

Their minimums are always a bit short but if you want to upgrade RAM is probably the simplest upgrade to your PC you can do....and the cheapest.

Do you know the speed of your RAM, if not run CPUZ and find out the speed, and then you can pick up another Gigabyte from around £20. All you have to do is whack it into the slot and thats that.

You're likely to see a significant difference with another Gig.