Spec to play 720p MKV HD Files?

ScoobyDoo

ScoobyDoo

ScoobyDoo

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My old media centre is showing its age and the Athlon 64 3200 processor cant cope with decoding HD media.

Im after a motherboard, processor, cooler (quiet as possible) and ram(1gb or 2gb) to decode/play 720p x264 MKV files.

I was thinking of getting:-

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
along with a AMD AM2 4050e processor.

Would this be powerful enough to play 720p x264 MKV files?
 
Your athlon should be able to decode just fine, more than likely your software is setup poorly.

I recently set my mums ancient laptop (Pentium M 1.6ghz/512mb ram) to run HD and it plays back HD stuff just fine.

Get rid of VLC player/klite codec pack and any other crap you might have and get yourself CoreAVC and KMPLAYER. It will rock your world.
 
I had recent problems of a similar nature myself regarding DVD and 720 HD playback on my old PC.

I installed Zoom Player today (Standard which turns out not capable of playing DVD?) with an unexpected answer to my previous DVD replay problems. Zoom player removed some K-Lite codecs and now my Windows Player plays back DVD and 720 HD content very well indeed?

VLC is still jerky though, and I cannot get smooth replay of 1080 HD content?

May try those suggested players myself and complete removal of K-Lite and VLC.

What graphics card are you using?
 
No reason to upgrade, your system should do perfectly fine, so explore the software issue. If it doesn't work out, consider upgrading just the CPU, if you have a socket 939 board, there are lots of cheap (used) and very powerful alternatives that can chew through HD playback.
 
J.D is spot on.

Off load the encoding from your cpu to one of those cards he has suggested and you'll be well pleased. Quality will be ace too.
 
wolvers69 said:
J.D is spot on.

Off load the encoding from your cpu to one of those cards he has suggested and you'll be well pleased. Quality will be ace too.
Click to expand...

Will the graphics card sort out the encoding for x264 MKV though or just blueray files played from a blueray drive?.
 
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Looks like ill be able to save some cash, the 3200 can still cope hopefully. Im reinstalling the OS, I think its down to a software issue.
Just going to put on coreavc and use media player classic and see what happens.

Ill keep you posted.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
 
Got it working fine now... :)

Did a complete reinstall of XP, only using COREAVC and AC3filter along with Media Player classic and its playing the MKV files great, with DTS passthrough sound :)

Using 50% CPU power on my aging Athlon 64 3200.

Saved me a few quid there :) Thanks everyone
 
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