Don't bother with a beefier video card. The higher model ones are simply going to offer more 3D power for games, along with more noise, heat, and power draw. Looking at some reviews of HD-DVD and BluRay playback on the PC, the 8600 card seems to be one of the best for accelerating the decoding, reducing the CPU burden. Though, with the processor you are going for, such offloading probably isn't as necessary.