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Help Me Watch 720p Movies Smoothly On My Old Dell Optiplex- Advice Needed.

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14 Sep 2017
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As you've probably gathered from the thread title I'm pretty clueless when it comes to PC's...

My problem is this, I've recently started watching a lot of 720p/50fps movies (Mostly on H.264 format) usling VLC or PotPlayer on my old Dell machine, and whilst it does play them, the playback is jerky/chopppy lots of times and pixilates occasionally too, almost like frames are being dropped quite often. I'm assuming an upgrade from the onboard Intel Q35 graphics to a dedicated card would help matters?

System:
Dell Optiplex 755
Intel Core Duo 3.00 ghz
4G DDR2 RAM
160G SATTA HD (121G free)
Intel Q35 graphics
300W power supply
Running Windows 10 64bit.

My main questions are...

1. Will a dedicated card help movies play more smoothly, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

2. If the answer to the above question is yes, then what low cost cards would be suitable and compatible with my set up and Windows 10? Any suggestions as to cards I should be looking at?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions/support on this chaps
smile.gif
 
Soldato
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Any cheap card will do as they will have media decoders with h.264 support, the recent ones even supporting HEVC/VP9.

GT 710 seems to be the cheapest on OcUK and will handle h.264 even at 1080p just fine: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-components/graphics-cards/nvidia/geforce-gt-710

Or you could step up to the 1030 for 4K HEVC/VP9 media as well for future proofing, but it's about double the price. And seems all the AMD alternatives are completely out of stock.

As for media players, try MPC-BE, I found that could play 720p content on a low end Atom notebook years ago. Although I did use LAV Filters with it as well and set the LAV video decoder to DXVA2 (copy back) in the hardware acceleration settings which seems to have helped with smooth playback.
 
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You can pick up an 8800GT for 10 pound. Maybe 5. It'll do. It's period accurate (was a mid-high range card in 2007) and it does good video decoding. It won't do all the latest codecs, but for a fiver, who cares? You'll have to pick one up used. Haven't been sold retail in a decade.
 
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First things first, thanks for the help/replies :)

Of the cards mentioned the GT 710 sounds like a good call! I like the sound of it on the basis that it supports NVIDIA® PureVideo™ and therefore offers H.264, WMV/VC-1, and MPEG-4 Hardware Acceleration. Good call!

My questions would be...

1. Is the GT 710 comatible with my system (Power supply/CPU etc)?
2. I run windows 10, assuming I bought the card, would it be best to run the drivers disc that comes with it, or to simply plug it in/connect it then go directly to...https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/103913 and download the Windows 10 drivers?

Again, thanks in advance for putting up with me and what must probably be pretty stupid/silly questions on this!

Edit to say: Is there virtue in going for the model with 2G memory as opposed to the 1G version?


 
Last edited:
Soldato
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1) It's a low end card so won't use much power and will not strain your PSU. Your CPU won't bottleneck it for video playing.
2) Always use the latest drivers from the Nvidia site, the disk usually is from the site anyway but will be a few versions older.
3) For your use, no, there's not really any point going from 1GB to 2GB.

Have you tried the suggested video player to see if that plays 720p content on your current setup?
 
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@ hornetstinger : Yep, it plays them but playback is jerky/glitchy.

@Orcvader : Yup, tried the MPC-BE. This yielded slightly better results than PotPlayer/VLC. The best so far is the standard WMP oddly enough.

It's also worth mentioning that I can play 720p h264 files, although frames are dropped and playback isn't smooth. Interestingly 720p 25fps h264 files are fine, it's 50fps h264 that yields choppy playback.

I'm going to pick up the GT 710 on my way home from the office tonight and see how I get on. I'll make sure to report back here and report my findings ;)
 
Soldato
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Have you tried going into the VLC settings and just disabling GPU acceleration? That will put the CPU in charge of decoding which will either improve things or make them worse (but it won't cost you anything to find out).
 
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Right, time to update this thread as promised.

@ubersonic: Yep, tried that as well as all the usual tricks to get VLC to play ball, no luck.

Last night I installed the GT 710 (I went for the 2G model as it was only £5 more) and I can confirm that it completely resolved my issues :) Playback is super smooth and even picture quality looks better. Thanks to everyone who chimed in on this, your help has allowed me to 100% fix my problem, it's been a wonderful induction into the Overclockers site.

Special mention to @Orcvader on this, I couldn't have done this without you, thank you!

One final (And also silly question) I'd ask on this topic is.... The drivers I installed for Windows 10 on the disk that came with the card were numbered 365.10, where-as on the Geforece website... https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/103913 there's a driver listed for Windows 10 as 368.39.... Do I have to un-install the drivers I got from the disk and then install the drivers from the website, or can I just go ahead and install the drivers from the site without removing the ones I already have?

Also, is the aove even necessary? Should my card/software be automatically updating itself?

Again, thanks in advance guys.
 
Soldato
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Glad it's all working for you :).

You can install the newer drivers on top of the current drivers, no need to uninstall, although the Nvidia installer will have an option for a clean install.

The card won't update itself but Windows 10 may randomly update it if Microsoft detects a newer one than the installed one, which is usually slower than getting it from Nvidia.

Up to you if you want to update, the 710 is a pretty old card now so drivers are pretty stable, probably won't see any improvements.
 
Soldato
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hmm interesting thread, I'm now thinking of building a pc out of old bits for my room to watch downloaded stuff on.. I have the Core 2 duo and motherboard, but only 2gb ram so will have to hunt for that, I have an unbranded HTPC case with 300w psu. I have a 64gb ssd and 500gb hdd.. .. I have a GT210 Is this too old it mentions pure video on the NVidia website?
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Oct 2009
Posts
16,548
Location
Greater London
hmm interesting thread, I'm now thinking of building a pc out of old bits for my room to watch downloaded stuff on.. I have the Core 2 duo and motherboard, but only 2gb ram so will have to hunt for that, I have an unbranded HTPC case with 300w psu. I have a 64gb ssd and 500gb hdd.. .. I have a GT210 Is this too old it mentions pure video on the NVidia website?
It supports h.264 so should work fine, maybe even with 1080p content.
 
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