Kodi Community Forum

Hello guys,

First of all, is there any specific video card recommended by Kodi?

I am running Ubuntu (14.04.1 LTS) on my PC. I need to add a video card that is able to do hardware decoding for every possible media file (or every possible codec).

I read somewhere that it is better to get Nvidia card with Linux OS because AMD cards have drivers issues with Linux OS.

Note: if there is something that is capable of running x265, 4K, etc..., this will be perfect.

no current card can really fully decode h265 and certainly not "every possible codec".

for common codecs, both low end nvidia and amd will work, with nvidia still being the best.

Though the recent Intel drivers for Windows have added H265 hybrid VPU/GPU (or CPU?) compute drivers - and Broadwell Core i series CPUs are said by Intel to support this with 10 bit HEVC/H265 (Haswell is 8 bit).

I recommend either GT 630 V2 or a GT 730 NVidia GPU. Just enough power to play anything we have except HEVC, including 4k.

The only future-proof GPU for HEVC is the GTX 960. I expect this fall we will get that decoding engine in a HTPC card.

(2015-02-07, 18:24)wsnipex Wrote: [ -> ]no current card can really fully decode h265

The Nvidia GTX 960 has full hardware decode of H.265/HEVC V1.