What are HD cards used for?

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j33hopper

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Are they just used so you can watch HD movies only or are there actually some HD games? If so, can some of you suggest some HD games? Thanks in advance for any input
 
Its just that the cards have the ability to decode HD in hardware, which makes them perfect for HTPC applications. As far as i know there are no HD games. The cards are normal fully functioning graphics cards with this ability as well.

Mactronix
 


Not quite true.

HD stands for High Deffinition that is a resolution of 720p = 1280x720 or 1080p = 1920x1080

So any games capable of displaying resolution higher or equal to 1280x720 are High Definition games.

The old console games from the old Xbox displayed at 640x480 and lower...

HD Gaming has been more of a marketing gimmick or a selling feature for the latest game consoles since they are able to render these games at HD resolution.
HD gaming on PC has been available for quite a long time.

So to answer your original question, go to the store and pickup any game from the shelf, as long as you have a normal monitor cable of displaying that resolution and a regular video card capble of rendering at 1280x 720 and above you should be able to enjoy the benefits of HD Gaming 😉
 
Ok clever arse :kaola:
But you are actually missing the point of what you are saying. There are no as such HD games they will all display at a lower res so to use your own logic that makes them HD capable. Not HD games 😗
And to go further its got nothing to do with the games per-say its the display equipment thats HD or not not the games. 😉

Anyway i believe the original sentiment of the question was meant as in are there any games that need a HD card to play and the answer is no. (to the best of my knowledge)

Mactronix :)
 


Its a general misconception. I am not sure what you understand under HD but the actual term is used to define a resolution standard. All of the PC games are able to render at these higher or so calledHD resolutions, thus making them HD games.

I think you are confusing the terms converting and rendering. For example all of the Xbox 360 games are rendered at 720p = 1280x720 but if you have a TV capable of displaying 1080p =1920x1080 that the Xbox will up convert the game to that resolution. Game will still be rendered at "lower" (720p) resolution
All of the PC games can be rendered at HD resolutions thus making them HD games. No one really classifies them as HD or the term is not used in marketing because is been available for PC gamers for a long time.
The reason that lately it got introduced is the availability of TVs that are capable of displaying these high resolutions and also the MS and SOny game consoles which are also able to render games at this resolution, thus providing more pixels per inch = more detail to the image = better picture quality. They've been using this "HD" term to market their new game consoles and TVs respectivly. Some people tend to take this "HD" term out of proportion. As I said, it's nothing new to the PC world.

So since our friend used "HD" in his question I am answering him acordingly.

It would have been the same, if he formed the question in this way: "Are they just used so you can watch movies at 1280x720 resolution only or are there actually some games that can be played at 1280x720? If so, can some of you suggest some games that can be rendered at 1280x720 resolution or higher? Thanks in advance for any input"

One more thing, ATI has been using the HD addition to their video cards naming convention because with these cards they also include a capability for hardware decoding of BluRay and HD-DVD movies, thus making them capable of taking the load from the CPU when displaying High Definition movies. And to answer the second part of the question, no, when it comes to games, you don't need to have this hardware capability to play "High Definition" games.

Cheers :)
 
Thanks for the answers. One key part of this conversation was the mention of the ATI displaying HD in the name of their cards now. For someone like me who is a noob and doesnt know much about this stuff it can be confusing. I just purchased a new computer with a HD 4870 card. Thus the question came to me about games in HD.

With the tit for tat between the 2 of you, I now understand alot more about it. Thanks for the intriguing conversation. It helped alot.
 
Sorry Euphoria_MK, I think you are the one that doesn't understand.

When the HD cards came out, and I don't mean ones with HD in the name, the big selling point was that they would offload the additional processing to the card so the CPU would not get hammered. They will all play games in "HD", but they won't all do the work for the CPU when decoding "HD" movies.

ATI calls it ATI Avivo™ HD.
Nvidia calls it PureVideo™ HD

Notice how there is not one word about playing games in their ads. That's because it's all about HD playback. The Nvidia link even has a graphic depicting the difference in CPU usage.

I should also mention that a lot of the cards that were sold as HD were not HDCP compliant, so as soon as they start enforcing HDCP they won't work. A little bit of a scam going on there IMO, and it's not just VGAs.
 


Sorry Zorg but you did not read my whole post:
I am qouting myself "include a capability for hardware decoding of BluRay and HD-DVD movies, thus making them capable of taking the load from the CPU when displaying High Definition movies"

Please read the the whole post before trying to respond.

If you realy want to have a conversation about HD encoding and decoding, we can open another topic, and I can go there in details about the hardware and software aspect of the ATI's HD4800 series.

No harm done though.

Cheers
 
My concern is that you are going around about the definition of HD itself, and that technically the HD designation in the cards is related to games in some way, that is not correct.

It is only related to video playback as indicated by my links. Don't believe me read the source material from the manufactures. An HD card is what they say it is. So you are wrong, not in that you didn't include video playback, but that you included a whole bunch of unrelated information that does not apply at all.

The cards are HD only because they assist the CPU with the HD decoding work load, nothing more. They added features in later iterations but that is not what makes them HD.

Mactronix was right. I encourage you to read the links.

No harm done.
 


He was talking about Mactonix's comment of how "there are no HD games", he never said that you need a card with HD video processing capabilities in order to play games in HD. In fact he explicitly states otherwise.







 
The whole world knows what constitutes HD resolution, at least I hope they do.

He confused the issue. Technically, they're all "HD capable" games as far as the PC is concerned, depending on how far you want to go back, which he addressed here.


Then he brought in the hype pushed by the gaming console manufacturers here.
Great, what does that have to do with the OPs question? Nothing, it's unrelated information that confuses the issue.

The OPs question was:
The answer is that the HD cards offload the HD decoding to the card to reduce the load on the CPU. And also that there are no games specifically tagged as "HD" or all games are in "HD" you choose which one you like. This is what Mactronix effectively said. When he said there are no HD games, he meant that there are no games specifically sold as HD games that he knew of. I could be wrong about that, but it's how I read it. I would hope that the OP understands that you set your resolution and other settings based on the power of the card. The lesson in HD and the consoles did not add to or refute Mactronix's post and actually confused the issue.

Also, he started his post with this.
And then proceeded to split hairs, because Mactronix left off the words "specifically sold as".

So I say wrong, quite true.

 
@ Zorg
Yes you did read the intention of my post correctly, I was just answering the OP's post in the way i beleived it was meant.
I really dont know what Euphoria_MK was trying to get at, I like you see no corelation between how consoles output to displays and what the OP was asking.
This from turboflame sums it up perfectly for me.

He was talking about Mactonix's comment of how "there are no HD games", he never said that you need a card with HD video processing capabilities in order to play games in HD. In fact he explicitly states otherwise.

Thats pretty much how i read the OP's question,
Do you need a HD card to play HD games and do HD games actually exist.Or is it just for watching movies.

Thanks for the support.

Mactronix :)
 
Well I have to say that Euphoria_MK did say HD cards were not needed to play games. That wasn't really my point and I was watching TV while posting, oops.

My main complaint is that he said that what you posted was "not quite true" and then proceeded to write a novel about a bunch of unrelated trivia, when it was clear, to me at least, you meant there are no games sold as HD.

All he had to say, if he felt it was necessary, was "well all games are technically HD, you must mean not sold as HD".

Or he could have posted his novel without pissing on you first, either way would have been fine with me.

 


Wow, nobody was pissing on anyone. We had a normal conversation.
Apparently the problem here is that you have an issue, and you are pissing around without reading through all the posts.
Everything you stated was clearly explained, and if you got somewhere confused is due to the fact that you did not read the posts in the order, but you were rather watching TV and posting here in the same time, trying to start an argument or find an argument when the matter has already been cleared, and everyone seems to agree on that but you.

Anyhow I am just trying to help here and thus have no intentions in pissing on anyone, and that includes you, so move on.

Cheers
 
Actually, I have no problem with quoting a poster and then responding with "not quite true" if the post is in error, preferably with a concise response as to why. His post was not in error so I had to assume that you were pissing on him. If you were not, then all is well. I did read your post and got a little more irritated with the lesson you were trying to give Mactronix in HD and the xbox scene, which were completely unrelated to the OPs question and his answer.

So, since you weren't pissing on him and you weren't trying to splain the basics of HD to him I guess all is well.

Cheers
 
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