Does a new video card(not the latest) help with HD playback

[PurdueRy]

My brother has an older Dell. 1.7 GHz Willamette P4 processor, 384 MB PC133 RAM, currently a Radeon 7200 64 MB DDR Graphics card.

Will upgrading his computer to a Radeon 9800 pro help with Video playback? Right now, most of the videos play, but just stutter a bit. He's wondering if this upgrade would possible allow him to play this.

 

[xtknight]

A CPU upgrade would help the most. The Radeon 9800 still wouldn't accelerate H.264 video. Try installing ffdshow or using mplayer or VideoLAN client.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: xtknight
A CPU upgrade would help the most. The Radeon 9800 still wouldn't accelerate H.264 video. Try installing ffdshow or using mplayer or VideoLAN client.

He's not trying to do h.264. Its mainly just hi def wmv and captured HD encoded into Divx/xVid

 

[Looney]

Wow, his system stutters playing divx/xvids? Maybe try more ram, because it certainly shouldn't have a problem doing those.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Looney
Wow, his system stutters playing divx/xvids? Maybe try more ram, because it certainly shouldn't have a problem doing those.

Only high res ones

 

[Looney]

Wow, i never knew divx did HD now.

 

[xtknight]

So how does mplayer perform? Can you check what is bottlenecking playback using the task manager? Is CPU hitting 100%? Is there any free virtual memory (physical or page file)?

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: xtknight
So how does mplayer perform? Can you check what is bottlenecking playback using the task manager? Is CPU hitting 100%? Is there any free virtual memory (physical or page file)?

Well I took my radeon 9800pro and put it in his computer. The video then ran great. Looks like it really does make a difference. Although I convinced him to upgrade his ram amt. too