GPU for editing 7D video?

I have realized that my PC comes a bit short when it comes to editing HD video from the 7D. Playback is very choppy. I currently use the onboard graphics card. Can someone recomend a PCI express (x16) card that could boost the HD editing a bit?
I am not looking to spend much more than $150

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2404.html

Take a look at the price range you're looking for, and even a step up. You can probably find the cards for cheaper on newegg.com than the prices listed on tomshardware.

Any video card based on a current chipset (by Nvidia or ATI) will do, even in that price range.
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Hay,

Graphics card has very little to do with video, they are for processing 3D graphics. If you want better performance, a faster, multi core CPU, with at least 4GB ram is ideal(more is better!).

While some graphics cards can help with applying, in real time, effects to video (like removing compression artifacts, de-interlacing video, adjusting colour balance). They are quite useless for actual video processing, when using programs like Adobe premiere.

Without a doubt, spend as little money as possible. CPU and RAM is what you really need.

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Why GPU? What you need is the CPU. GPU is for processing real-time 3D images which really means 3D games and Google Earth. Again GPU is for processing and manupulating 3D images while try to display them in real time.

Processing video is a 2D process which really requires a good CPU. It does not matter for HD or Standard resolution. Your GPU has little or no impacts on your video processing. Trust me get yourself the best CPU you can afford and even go with an onboard graphic will give you much better processing than a highend GPU.

BTW, if you play 3D games, you should have both good GPU and CPU in order to get a great experience. GPU alone will not do the trick.

Well, I have a core 2 duo (mobile for desktop) running at 2Ghz. Upgrading this is not much of an option at the moment (too expensive).
I might go for some more RAM as I only have 2G now.

But I read in a previous thread (can't find it now) that the "newer" GPU's have HW acceleration of H.264 playback, and that should improve performance a lot.

GPU support is necessary to play back HD movies. GPUs now play a more important role than they used to.

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Accelerating playback won't help you much. For editing video, more cores / threads and faster clock speeds help more. RAM helps too, especially with large files, but editing video is very CPU heavy.

The problem is, most video editing software does not use the playback acceleration of standard desktop GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA. Most video editing software installs its own drivers for video playback in order to maintain frame-accurate timing, so it bypasses the more general-purpose GPU drivers. The GPU is used by some filters to accelerate rendering, but that's about all. For now, the CPU is the main workhorse of video editing.

I just asked a friend who is a system administrator of companies, and a computer enthusiast. He replied that at least an ATI 3580 or Geforce 8800GT class video card is required for smooth HD video playback. I assume that the above is true for editing as well.
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I was a C and assembly programmer who programmed computer games for nearly a decade, was a systems admin in a life prior to that, and I build my own computers. My current main system has an overclocked i7 965ee and a pair of NVIDIA 285s in SLI. To use the GPU video playback acceleration of current GPUs, the software has to be written to specifically use it, because it is not part of the OS (yet). When you buy those cards, they come with a "special" version of a DVD playback program written specifically to use the hardware video decoding of that particular card. This makes playback smooth as long as you use that program. You can put that same exact video into a video editor and it will playback choppy unless the CPU has enough threads and speed to decode it. Current video editing software does not use the GPU video decoder (plus those GPUs don't even have a video encoder). The current generation of video editing software only uses the GPU to accelerate filter rendering and to render the 2D image buffer to the screen after decoding (which doesn't require much GPU horsepower). This means you can resize the window with faster redraws, but the video will still play back choppy on weak CPUs. The decoding and encoding of the video stream is done using the CPU and that's what makes video playback choppy on slower computers, no matter what GPU you stick in it.

I believe what he is looking for is something like this, but is less expensive.
http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/rtx2/

These are not video cards, but cards that do DSP processing in hardware to assist when editing and encoding video. You still need a very fast CPU.

I'm looking for the same thing.

Exactly. That's a hardware encoder and decoder. Those actually DO speed up video editing, unlike consumer GPUs. Like you said, though. Those are pricey.

You sound like a man who might be able to help me . . .

I want to upgrade my CPU for video editing with the 7D. My current rig has a Striker Extreme MB with a E6850 CPU. With this MB, my upgrade options for duo cores range up to the e8600, and for quads, up to the qx6850. My understanding is that I really need a quad, so my options seem to be the q6600, q6700, qx6700, qx6800 and qx6850.

Any thoughts on which CPU would give me the most bang for the buck?

Well I just realized that my (only 2 years old, damn time goes by fast) computer only supports 1x PCIexpress. So back to the drawing board.

I also just realized that I edited full HD video from a Canon HF10 on the very same computer a year ago. And that was fairly painless and smooth. But then again, the video from HF10 is another codec (AVC) and interlaced (the video from 7D is progressive right?).

Well, I guess I will live with the choppiness for now, after all, video is a fairly small part of what I use the 7D for.

What others have said is true. CPU and RAM is more important an upgrade, but the main problem with editing MOV on PC is Apple. They've never given PC users a Quicktime player that properly uses hardware.

Even using a Core I7 with 6GB of RAM, editing in Premier will still "slideshow" from time to time.

To edit on a PC fluidly, some form of conversion is necessary.

We're thinking of trying hackintosh to see if FCP will give us a boost...

Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad "were" great but you want to get the new Core i7. it will not fit into your old Core 2 Duo motherboard. It is a whole new architecture. Purchasing Core 2 Duo at this point is very much buying a 24 months old technology while the brand new Core i7 just being released.

Also get yourself a Solid State Drive (SSD). If you are not familiar with SSD, do some research. It is a big wow. This is an item people tend to overlook. You don't need a HUGE SSD. Get a reasonable size like 80G/160G. Put the OS and your apps on it. You want to save some of your video files (which are you working) on the SSD. Install a second SATA drive (whatever size you can afford). You save the rest of the data there. By doing this, your system responsiveness will be topnotch. I have SSDs on both of my laptops. There is no going back to SATA drive.

Good luck.

Another item people tend to overlook is the Codecs. Do you have a good codecs? How well written of this little piece of decode/encode software impact how good, how fast of your hardware will run and how good the quality you get. Make sure you download the latest version as well as trying out different versions from different vendors.

I've seen lots of discussion in other forums of using a software package called Neoscene to covert 5dII and 7d video files to a more PC-friendly format for editing. May be worth looking into.

While a quad core will help smooth it out versus your dual core, you may still not reach smooth playback. That architecture has much lower memory bandwidth than the newer i7 architecture because the memory controller is on the CPU die with i7. If it were me, I'd muddle along for a bit with what you have while saving my money to replace both the MB and CPU.

Also, when you do get an i7, don't bother with the most expensive model. Just pick up the 920 and overclock it a bit. You can easily reach the stock clock of the more expensive i7 chips without overheating. Intel chips are really good at overclocking.

If you are really stuck only considering a Core 2 quad upgrade, then get the Q6600 and tweak the clock speed up, rather than wasting money on a Q6850.

Hope this helps.