Adding 9500 GT to laptop via PCI in docking station

[Xcelerate]

I posted this on another forum, but thought it might be a better question for Anandtech

I have a bit of a weird situation. I have a Latitude D630 I got in 2007, and it came with an integrated Nvidia Quadro NVS 135m, which unless I am not utilizing it properly, is very crappy at simply playing back 1080p HD. The only way that I have been able to play 1080p smoothly so far is using CoreAVC (CUDA unchecked) with the overlay mixer as renderer. The overlay mixer of course has horrible color reproduction, so I switch to using the DirectX Enhanced Video Renderer, and suddenly frames drop. Never mind the fact that all of the actual H.264 decoding is taking place in the CPU-- simply pushing that many pixels through the graphics card is apparently enough to drop frames. And when I run CoreAVC using CUDA, then I get about 4 fps. (Same thing occurs when I use DXVA on FFDshow).

So, in order to get anything watchable, I'm in a bit of a need of an upgrade. Buying a new computer is out of the question as I'm a college student, and my laptop with its T7700 works great for everything except this one particular task.

I do, however, have a docking station, which supports the option for a PCI card to be added (internally, the laptop supports PCI express, so why Dell made the docking station take PCI is beyond me). On Newegg, I saw this particular graphics card, in which one reviewer (channelv) mentions that he successfully made the thing run in his docking station. I would like to order one, but I have a few questions as I know nothing about graphics cards.

The memory on the card is 128-bit DDR2, but since the docking station interface is PCI, is this going to severely cripple the card's performance?

More importantly, do you think this configuration will allow smooth 1080p playback?

And also, the reviewer mentions how hot the card gets because it is in a docking station, and how he soldered some copper onto it to try and keep it cooler. Because of this, he recommends a different card for the docking station that uses an 8400 GS. However, this card has a 64-bit GDDR2 interface, which when compared to the 9500 GT, is this enough to do what I want?

And finally, the specs for the card say a 400 watt power supply is required. The docking station is only 130 watts, but since that reviewer managed to get his card working, it seems possible. Looking up the 9500 GT itself (on this page), it says it draws only 50 watts max.. why the discrepancy?

Sorry for the long post, but any help for a GPU newb would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Zap]

I have a Latitude D630 I got in 2007, and it came with an integrated Nvidia Quadro NVS 135m, which unless I am not utilizing it properly, is very crappy at simply playing back 1080p HD... all of the actual H.264 decoding is taking place in the CPU... when I run CoreAVC using CUDA, then I get about 4 fps.

The 135m is basically a mobile version (think lower clock speeds) of the GeForce 8400 GS optimized for stability. It has 16 CUDA cores. Not quite sure what decoders need, but even stuff like PhysX requires minimum 32 CUDA cores.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

If you're not doing any gaming then the 9500GT won't be using 50W. It'll probably use somewhere around 20-25W for video playback. Probably even less with the PCI version.

The reason the card says 400W is that this particular recommendation takes into account the entire system and crappy power supplies. So it's inflated to cover all bases.

 

[tcsenter]

I have this laptop with a slower CPU (T7250), 4GB RAM, running Vista Home Premium (32-bit). This uses the 8-SP 8400 GS (NVS 135M) part, not the 16-SP part.

Nonetheless, the 9.x Mbps 1080p clips I have look great. Drops a frame every now and then (like once every 60 seconds) but its not distracting or annoying. I'm using the latest Verde platform (notebook) reference driver from NVIDIA - 258.96 WHQL.

Players (tested both):

WMP12 (for AVC/VC1 WMV-HD clips)
VLC Player 1.1 (for .MP4 clips)

I enabled GPU acceleration in VLC player (and DXVA is enabled by default in WMP). Not using 3:2 pull-down (inverse telecine) through NVIDA Control Panel.

Sounds like a codec issue. The only things I installed other than WMP12 are DiVX and VLC.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Can't you use pure software decoding? I have a D630 with the GMA x3100, and it can software decode every 1080P H.264 file I throw at it. My CPU is a T8300 (Penryn 3MB @ 2.4) which is a bit newer, but my sister has the same laptop with a T7250 and has no problems either.

This is using MPC-HC with EVR.

BTW the dock is PCI probably because the D-series docks support D-series Latitudes dating back around 7 years. Similarly, the DVI port doesn't work with HDCP even if your graphics can process protected video, so you have to use VGA.