Athlon XP 3200 + 7600 GS AGP = 1080p Video?

[GustySoul]

Hi all - just looking for a little advice...

I'm running an old Athlon XP 3200+ w/ an even older Radeon 7500. (Ironically, driving a newer 1900x1200 LCD.)

I don't play computer games at all, but I enjoy lots of video & multimedia content. Right now the machine can't handle 1080p HD video well, and I'm wondering if a simple video card upgrade could tide me over until I do a more complete upgrade.

I was thinking an AGP GeForce 7600GS, like this one...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814125039

I'm quite familiar w/ the new restrictions on Blu-Ray / HD-DVD and don't plan on playing those w/ this machine... mostly just looking for something that could handle things like HD Quicktime movie trailers and things smoothly.

 

[Makaveli]

It will help alittle, but I don't think it will be enough.

 

[Auric]

'twouldn't help with AVC since PVP apparently requires SSE2. Indeed it could even be a downgrade despite the significantly newer design since Nvidia video playback places a higher demand on the CPU. X1600 may be an improvement but ATI only claimed 720p HWA and it would still be wise to check on CPU requirements. Other than upgrading to a Celeron there isn't really any other option

Well, some things you can do in lieu of adequate hardware is to minimize demand by eschewing Apple's player in favour of MPC and then testing Apple's decoder vs. ffdshow and CoreAVC, both of which allow disabling standard deblocking if necessary. Grab QuickTime Alternative which includes Apple codecs, MPC and CoreAVC.

 

[GustySoul]

Thanks guys - sounds like I should skip this and look towards overhauling my machine.

1080p Quicktime w/ CoreAVC works almost OK right now, but loses audio-video synch to some degree, I think because the video isn't being processed quickly enough. (And the Radeon driver seems to BSOD Windows occaisionally - that's annoying.)

I was hoping to get something in the meantime while waiting on Vista, DX10, and more standard HDCP support, but no biggie. Thanks again for the help .