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ATI 4350 won't play HD video..?!

jmp_78

jmp_78

jmp_78

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Joined
2 Mar 2009
Posts
612
Location
Nottingham
I recently turned some old components into an HTPC for my Dad. Specs were:

Athlon X2 245 @ 3.20 GHz
2GB DDR3
500GB Samsung F3

Everything is working fine except MT2S 1080p camcorder footage which is very jittery. It plays fine on my i5-750. The software used for playback on both machines is VLC.

I then installed an ATI 4350 1GB low profile video card and the CCC software/drivers... but nothing has changed. For reasons which I shan't go into, he has to use Windows XP.

Any ideas, do I have to enable something to get hardware video acceleration?
 
If it hasn't got a HDMI port on it you can try a DVI to HDMI converter! You have to use pure hdmi or a converter to get HD video or images.

Either that or in my opinion, the card is quite old and isn't exactly powerful, to be honest, my toaster is more powerful than that card.

I do not think the card is up to it dude. Sorry!
 
It's HDMI, connected to an HD telly. Also, the card claims to be '1080' ready playback wise. When video is running though, the CPU is maxed out, but no load on the video card. Can't work out how to get the card to take the workload?
 
Hmmm... What is the spec of the computer.

For full HD playback you need some decent hardware.

I think you need minimum AMD Athlon 4200+ 2.2ghz Dual Core or similar Intel and 2GB DDR2 800mhz Memory. I know this because my old motherboard has a HDMI connection on it and in the manual this is what it gave for minimum hardware specs to play HD!
 
CinderzFTW said:
Hmmm... What is the spec of the computer.

For full HD playback you need some decent hardware.

I think you need minimum AMD Athlon 4200+ 2.2ghz Dual Core or similar Intel and 2GB DDR2 800mhz Memory. I know this because my old motherboard has a HDMI connection on it and in the manual this is what it gave for minimum hardware specs to play HD!
Click to expand...

PC specs in original post, mildly overclocked dual-core Athlon plus dedicated video card as mentioned. As far as I'm concerned, should all be fine!?
 
Well from the specs (i didn't see lol) you should be able to play HD easily then.

Try a different piece of software like DivX or even Windows Media Player!
 
CinderzFTW said:
Well from the specs (i didn't see lol) you should be able to play HD easily then.

Try a different piece of software like DivX or even Windows Media Player!
Click to expand...

Hey Cinderz. WMP no good, tried it! DivX may be worth a go.

VLC always good for this on any PC I've tried, so am wondering if it's an XP issue?

Have you ever used VLC? I am wondering if I have to 'enable GPU acceleration' somehow?

EDIT: It would appear that GPU decoding is not supported in XP, only Vista or higher. I guess this would be the issue...
 
Last edited:
Hi there, if you are running VLC "out of the box", then GPU acceleration is disabled by default (as it is still experimental) so the heavy lifting is done by the CPU, not GPU. With high-bitrate files and a relatively modest CPU then you may not get smooth playback.

To remedy this either go into the "Tools" toobar in VLC. Then "preferences", "input & codecs" then tick "Use GPU acceleration (experimental)" in the codecs area.

Alternatively download and run MPC-HC, which is an excellent video player that does GPU acceleration by default (also runs fine in XP).
 
cmndr_andi said:
Hi there, if you are running VLC "out of the box", then GPU acceleration is disabled by default (as it is still experimental) so the heavy lifting is done by the CPU, not GPU. With high-bitrate files and a relatively modest CPU then you may not get smooth playback.

To remedy this either go into the "Tools" toobar in VLC. Then "preferences", "input & codecs" then tick "Use GPU acceleration (experimental)" in the codecs area.

Alternatively download and run MPC-HC, which is an excellent video player that does GPU acceleration by default (also runs fine in XP).
Click to expand...

Thanks Andi, appreciate the post :) Will try this at my Dad's at the weekend.

Reason my Dad has to use XP is that he is partially sighted, and has bespoke magnification software for use with this OS. As he 'knows his way around it', he doesn't want to even try upgrading to W7 (fair enough).

Will report back chaps, thanks.
 
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