Question Will a GPU speed up youtube/videos?

[Craig C]

If my computer can't quite handle web browsing, and I can't upgrade the CPU (its the fastest for the socket), and I'm maxed out on RAM, will adding a GPU make displaying websites, jpegs and videos any faster? Maybe the card can free up CPU resources needed for all the javascript? Assume I'm using a 4K monitor, and not gaming.

This is where it gets more complicated... I'm planning for like 6 years from now when my new i9-9900k with integrated graphics is becoming slow. I need to factor a possible GPU into buying the power supply and liquid-cooling requirements.

I also love the TOR browser, and I heard somewhere that GPUs are really good at crypto. For that matter, could a GPU assist software-based AES SSD encryption? Really noob question, I know.

Is there any reason to buy a graphics card in the future when my rig is bogged down by tons of javascript, even though I'm not a gamer, but use a huge monitor?

 

[NTMBK]

For videos specifically, a new graphics card can definitely help. The GPU has built in video encoder/decoder hardware, which will handle the decoding of online video content. For example right now websites are swapping from the older h.264 video codec to h.265, and only the most recent hardware has h.265 decoder support. (Your i9's integrated GPU has h.265 support.)

So maybe 6 years from now online video will have changed to an even more advanced codec which your i9 does not support, and adding a GPU will make your video decoding much smoother.

 

[Craig C]

Just to be clear, decoding video = playing, yes? I thought that was for editing.

 

[NTMBK]

Just to be clear, decoding video = playing, yes? I thought that was for editing.

Yes, video playback.

 

[maddogmcgee]

In 6 years time you could buy a very cheap GPu that uses maybe 75 watts and decodes whatever you need at the time. As long as your GPU is not maxed out now you will be fine.

 

[piokos]

If my computer can't quite handle web browsing, and I can't upgrade the CPU (its the fastest for the socket), and I'm maxed out on RAM, will adding a GPU make displaying websites, jpegs and videos any faster? Maybe the card can free up CPU resources needed for all the javascript? Assume I'm using a 4K monitor, and not gaming.

This is where it gets more complicated... I'm planning for like 6 years from now when my new i9-9900k with integrated graphics is becoming slow. I need to factor a possible GPU into buying the power supply and liquid-cooling requirements.

Yes, a GPU will give you that hardware decoding - assuming:
1) it supports the format in question (codec and resolution),
2) it is supported by the software you use.
Programs usually utilize the CPU decoder by default. If it isn't there, they may look for a dGPU, but that's never certain. Don't take this for granted.

I also love the TOR browser, and I heard somewhere that GPUs are really good at crypto. For that matter, could a GPU assist software-based AES SSD encryption? Really noob question, I know.

Essentially, a GPU could be used for any task - even one it's really bad at.
Again, this is a question of whether the program author decided to use a GPU. As for GPU encryption - probability of standarized support at some point in the future are quite high.
When? No idea. Currently it's at research stage (but a relatively popular topic).

 

[Craig C]

All of the above answers are such good information. Thanks "NTMBK", "maddogmcgee", and "piokos". I'd upvote your answers, but I cant find an icon for that with the way my old, old browser displays things.

The Asus WorkStation Z390 Pro has a PLX chip and can do 2 cards at x16, or 4 at x8. I've really been looking for excuses to buy a gpu (much later). I'm not a graphics content creator, I just like the looks of the WS board. No RGB! No armor!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Honestly, I would worry about that when the time actually comes that you 9900K or whatever actually feels "slow". Which, won't be for quite some time, I expect, unless we start getting 64-core and 128-core ARM chips in our PCs.

Anyways. When that day comes, as someone mentioned, there will be 75W PCI-E slot-powered video cards that can handle the video-decoding / codecs of modern web videos at that time, certainly.

I still browse on my 9220e AMD APU, which is only 6W single-module / dual-core Excavator-based, 1.6Ghz. If that thing can browse the web, mostly any CPU can.

PS. Get an ad blocker. Use Firefox, enable tracker and mining protection, add uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, you'll be all set.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

If my computer can't quite handle web browsing, and I can't upgrade the CPU (its the fastest for the socket), and I'm maxed out on RAM, will adding a GPU make displaying websites, jpegs and videos any faster? Maybe the card can free up CPU resources needed for all the javascript? Assume I'm using a 4K monitor, and not gaming.

This is where it gets more complicated... I'm planning for like 6 years from now when my new i9-9900k with integrated graphics is becoming slow. I need to factor a possible GPU into buying the power supply and liquid-cooling requirements.

I also love the TOR browser, and I heard somewhere that GPUs are really good at crypto. For that matter, could a GPU assist software-based AES SSD encryption? Really noob question, I know.

Is there any reason to buy a graphics card in the future when my rig is bogged down by tons of javascript, even though I'm not a gamer, but use a huge monitor?

Video cards can accelerate decoding (video play back) but it depends on encoding type the videos use and if the software playing the video specifically supports hardware accelerated playback. Most software does these days, most of the major browsers and most good video player software.

If you're doing any encrypting with AES the intel CPUs already have hardware accelerated AES built into them and again it's up to the apps to support it, good FDE software like Truecrypt and it's forks do. In fact it comes with a bench marking tool that allows you to bench encryption speeds and a modern intel CPU wont be a bottleneck for drive encryption, I've just benched a 100Mb encrypt and it's mean encryption time is 8.7GB/sec, that's on an 8800k @4.9Ghz. So the overhead for primary drive SSD read/writes will be extremely trivial even on really fast NVMe drives.

Your javascript question doesn't make much sense, JS is very lite and used primarily in browsers and shouldn't be causing you any problems, now or in future. The primary purpose of video cards is for gaming or 3D rendering, your best bet if you only need it for video decoding speed up is to just buy a very cheap one, video decoding for video cards is extremely trivial so a budget card is fine. Don't bother with anything more expensive if you're not gaming. Monitor resolution doesn't really matter for 2D stuff.

 

[Craig C]

JS is very lite and used primarily in browsers and shouldn't be causing you any problems, now or in future.

My current, really old, computer & browser are terribly slow, and I blame the megabytes of JS fluff these days. Google speadsheets are unusable.

Monitor resolution doesn't really matter for 2D stuff.

That's good to know, and a relief.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

My current, really old, computer & browser are terribly slow, and I blame the megabytes of JS fluff these days. Google speadsheets are unusable.

That's good to know, and a relief.

Wow really, what's the CPU/RAM? That'd have to be quite old to struggle with basic browser tasks. Could be upgrade time for a new mobo/cpu/ram, you could do a fairly budget build these days which can handle basic desktop stuff for fairly cheap. Modern CPUs with build in graphics don't really have any problem decoding video either so might be the way to go rather investing in a video card.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My current, really old, computer & browser are terribly slow, and I blame the megabytes of JS fluff these days. Google speadsheets are unusable.

Pentium 4 or Athlon XP or older?



You know, thermal-throttling capability have been around for quite some time, around since that era.

It's quite possible that:
1) Your computer is "old", and hasn't been cleaned regularly, and the dust layer buildup on the CPU heatsink and chassis fans and grates, could be causing overheating, and thus slowdown.
2) You are running out of RAM, and thrashing because the pagefile is on a HDD.
3) You have a HDD, rather than an SSD, and paging is causing really bad performance. Or just saving all of those scripts to the HDD, that sites use these days.

So, let us know what you have for PC components (CPU, RAM type/size, HDD or SSD), and if it's been cleaned every year, or never cleaned, and we'll try to advise.

Edit: Just to add.

Even an older Core2 rig (after Pentium 4 era), can be made fairly "snappy", by dusting it off completely, maxing out the mobo's RAM capacity, and adding a decent SSD to it, and putting on Win10. Maybe Win7 would be better.

 

[piokos]

Your javascript question doesn't make much sense, JS is very lite and used primarily in browsers and shouldn't be causing you any problems, now or in future.

Actually that's quite misleading. ;-)
JS is definitely not "lite". It's actually quite heavy, as in: not very optimal.

What you meant was: most websites are lite. OK, they may be for a 9900K, but try a cheap mobile CPU or a 5-year-old desktop one - browsing will be far from smooth and pleasant.
And if you keep in mind that "websites" today are also huge, complex web interfaces to software, it's really hard to judge what will happen 5 years from now.
Maybe we'll be running everything in browsers? Maybe HTML5+CSS+JS will replace most GUI libraries?
To be honest, we're already halfway there... ;-)

The primary purpose of video cards is for gaming or 3D rendering, your best bet if you only need it for video decoding speed up is to just buy a very cheap one, video decoding for video cards is extremely trivial

It's not. Decoding is a very complex task and GPUs seriously suck at it.
GPU only makes sense here because of the dedicated hardware decoder.

So while I agree a cheap one will do, it is quite important for it to be the most modern and have the latest decoder on board.
For example, if you're looking for a cheap card for a workstation or casual PC, decoding features of GT 1030 may be worth the extra $40 compared to a GT 710.

 

[Craig C]

--- Current box ---
Pentium 4, 2.6GHz, circa 2001
1GB RAM (Slackware Linux 14.1 only barely uses the swap!)
MSI 865PE Neo2
Geforce 5200 Ultra
Firefox 24!
I meticulously washed the board, and RESOLDERED A SMT CAPACITOR that I knocked off. I'm particularly proud of that.

--- Next box ---
i9-9900k, EK waterblock
Asus WS Z390 Pro
(I'm barely taking advantage of this board's facilities; I just love the looks.)
GPU to be added at a later date, when newer codecs are used.
TOR privacy browser

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Actually that's quite misleading. ;-)
JS is definitely not "lite". It's actually quite heavy, as in: not very optimal.

What you meant was: most websites are lite. OK, they may be for a 9900K, but try a cheap mobile CPU or a 5-year-old desktop one - browsing will be far from smooth and pleasant.
And if you keep in mind that "websites" today are also huge, complex web interfaces to software, it's really hard to judge what will happen 5 years from now.
Maybe we'll be running everything in browsers? Maybe HTML5+CSS+JS will replace most GUI libraries?
To be honest, we're already halfway there... ;-)

It's not. Decoding is a very complex task and GPUs seriously suck at it.
GPU only makes sense here because of the dedicated hardware decoder.

So while I agree a cheap one will do, it is quite important for it to be the most modern and have the latest decoder on board.
For example, if you're looking for a cheap card for a workstation or casual PC, decoding features of GT 1030 may be worth the extra $40 compared to a GT 710.

JS is very lite, in fact server side javascript is exploding in popularity in part because of this. What you're saying is that some webapps are very heavy handed in their use of JS and yes that's true and yes older CPUs will struggle with that but older CPUs will also struggle with native desktop apps. You're not going to install say office 2019 on a very old computer and get significantly better performance than say google sheets/docs that run in a browser.

GPUs mostly suck because it's not a task you can easily parllelize which is the main strength of GPUs, and yes the dedicated hardware on them for decoding is where the speed comes from and yes ideally more modern GPUs would be best, but you don't need to get an old GPU to get a cheap one, there's plenty of modern GPUs from the latest lines that are budget models.

--- Current box ---
Pentium 4, 2.6GHz, circa 2001
1GB RAM (Slackware Linux 14.1 only barely uses the swap!)
MSI 865PE Neo2
Geforce 5200 Ultra
Firefox 24!
I meticulously washed the board, and RESOLDERED A SMT CAPACITOR that I knocked off. I'm particularly proud of that.

--- Next box ---
i9-9900k, EK waterblock
Asus WS Z390 Pro
(I'm barely taking advantage of this board's facilities; I just love the looks.)
GPU to be added at a later date, when newer codecs are used.
TOR privacy browser

If you're going for something high end like an i7 or above then you wont need a GPU for good video play back, that CPU will chew through anything you throw at it.