New card for HD Movie Playback?

[Dravic]

A friend of mine has an old S478 P4 3.0Ghz HT processor and a GF4 MX420. He wants to play HD movies (MKV's etc) on it but computer says no.

He would ideally like a GFX card with an HDMI port on it but would sticking in a new GFX card help or is it more likely to be the old processor or a software fault?

Also, did some S478 boards have PCI-E slots or were they all AGP or will it be a case of open it up and see? I know the MX420 is PCI so that's not a lot of help.

 

[Biffa]

AGP only I am afraid.

Best bet is either this

The Ati card should use a low amount CPU giving him the best experience.

 

[muon]

But I doubt you can get video acceleration for files with an mkv container. Unless you can somehow get powerdvd to play them. CoreAVC doesnt have video acceleration yet. AVC/h.264 files with an avi container should work fine through powerdvd though.

My best advice is to download the coreavc codec, http://www.coreavc.com/ and try it out. It is very efficient and along with haali media splitter (which it comes with), I bet that cpu can play 720p mkv files. Try with hyperthreading on and off as well. If the trial version works, you can procure the full version.

 

[AbsenceJam]

An ATi 34xx or 36xx + MPC-HC is what you need.

ghost101,
You can use the CyberLink decoder in other players, it's a normal DirectShow filter. MPC-HC has its own lovely DXVA decoder though.

 

[muon]

An ATi 34xx or 36xx + MPC-HC is what you need.

ghost101,
You can use the CyberLink decoder in other players, it's a normal DirectShow filter. MPC-HC has its own lovely DXVA decoder though.

But does it actually use the hd decoding ability of the 334xx/36xx cards? From reading the site, they seem to beusing normal ffdshow codecs which dont and are a lot less efficient than coreavc.

edit: ah nvm, I now know what dxva is.

 

[Biffa]

I think the 3650 is the lowest you can get in AGP, maybe they do a 3450 but I can't find one anywhere. And the 3650 also comes with HDMI which was requested.

Not sure about the accelleration side of the codecs you are discussing but I'm sure there must be something out there that will do the jobbie

 

[muon]

Either way, you could spend far less with coreavc. $8 and you have a trial version to make sure it works first.

CoreAVC™ for Windows
800 MHz Intel Pentium class or faster processor
At least 256MB of RAM
Windows 98, 2000 or XP

CoreAVC™ for Windows @ 480p video at 24 frames per second
1.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or faster processor
At least 256MB of RAM
64MB or greater video card
Windows 98, 2000 or XP

CoreAVC™ for Windows @ 720p video at 24-30 frames per second
2.2 GHz Pentium 4 or faster processor
At least 512MB of RAM
128MB or greater video card
Windows 98, 2000 or XP

CoreAVC™ for Windows @ 1080p video at 24-30 frames per second
2.8 GHz Pentium 4 or faster processor
At least 1GB of RAM
256MB or greater video card
Windows 98, 2000 or XP

It supports Vista btw.

 

[AbsenceJam]

But does it actually use the hd decoding ability of the 334xx/36xx cards? From reading the site, they seem to beusing normal ffdshow codecs which dont and are a lot less efficient than coreavc.

edit: ah nvm, I now know what dxva is.

As you've just found out yes, it uses DXVA.

 

[bledd]

btw, i've got a p4 motherboard with AGP and PCI-E

 

[Dravic]

Thanks for all the replies guys, will get him to try out core avc first, if that doesn't work I'll check what expansion slot he's got and grab a 36xx plus MPC-HC.