Need some advice with my HTPC

[Heller]

whenever i try to play .mkv format or any high definition format on my machine, its choppy and leads me to think my onboard graphics can;t handle highdef.

this is a spare box i put together to try out my first htpc, its nothing special but for xvid and light internet surfing, it does the job.

anywhere its a compaq and here are the basic specs, it also is using onboard 6150le as its video output.HTPC specs

Here are my mainboard specs Motherboard

my question is, if i upgrade my videocard will this problem stilla rise? is my cpu having any effect on HD content? I've maxed my ram and Im just trying to make the best of my spare parts whilist spending as little money as possible[broke college student]

I'd like a card with HDMI out, its just so easier with one cable then having to deal with audio and video, but if a card with hdmi is significantly more, its not a necessity


Thanks in advance-
Heller:beer:

 

[sivart]

Try a dedicated card. I paid $25 for an ASUS 256MB card with HDMI out and it plays / streams all HD files without any issue.

Mine is similar to this http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814131144

 

[kalrith]

The ATI 4550 should work well for you: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102819. Just make sure that the card you get does hardware encoding, which will take the work load off of your cpu. You should be able to use Google for lists of ATI and nVidia cards that do this. Also, I believe that the ATI 4xxx cards are the only ones that provide lossless audio via HDMI, but this won't matter unless you get a BD player.

 

[mshan]

"AMD states that while both the 4550 and 4350 support full hardware Blu-ray decode acceleration, the 4350 may not be able to fully accelerate a high bitrate 2nd stream for picture in picture scenarios."

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3420&p=2

Are the Sapphire Radeon 4350 and 4550 identical to the ATI reference design, except for passive cooling on 4350?

And is there no overscan with either card in Windows 7 (my XFX 7600GS seems to overscan in W7 RC1, though I only use drivers provided within W7)?

 

[Modelworks]

What are you using to play back video ? The player makes a big difference as does the renderer.
Download MP-HC and select EVR as the renderer under options. See if that improves the performance.
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

The other thing to try is XBMC and the newest directx builds. They are very fast even on low end systems.
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=35452&page=101

 

[Heller]

im using vlc media card, in a nutshell im just looking for a video card compatible with this pc, that will take the load of the cpu and play bluray without issues, HDMI would be a huge plus as-well

can somebody suggest some inexpensive video cards [$50's pushing it] i dont need the best just somthing to get the job done.

sivart- will this card do what i need? the price seems right and im ready to hit the buy button unless i find somthing cheaper or better secondhand in the fs/ft forum.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...A&ref=dynamitedata.com

basically just a suggestion of inexpensive cards would be great, so i can just search/skim the fs/ft section.

 

[Heller]

hows this card compared to your suggestions?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16814141094R

 

[sivart]

You might want to read the reviews on these especially if you are going to use 5.1 out via HDMI. I know some played nice and some didn't. Even if it was the same ATI card just a different brand.

I have played (and play) 1080i captures from TV with 5.1 via HDMI on my 256MB ATI low profile card. Granted my PC specs are a little higher (Dual Core P5200 / 4GB RAM). I'm using Vista Media center and it works great. No issues at all.

I haven't tried Blu-ray yet as a) I have a dedicated player and b) the affordable cards (in my budget) didn't yet output the HD codecs via HDMI and finding a low profile sound card that does isn't easy or cheap.

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: Heller
hows this card compared to your suggestions?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16814141094R

The card I recommended (link) is only $6 because it has free shipping. 4550 > 4350, so I think it's the better buy.

Edit: The 4550 will do everything perfectly that an HTPC needs to do. Even if you were building an uber HTPC, the only reason you'd need more than the 4550 is if you wanted to clean up SD images more (the 4670 does a better job than the 4550), if you wanted to game, or if you wanted to bitstream lossless audio (the 4550 still does lossless audio, but it only does LPCM).

 

[BassBomb]

If you are going to use VLC you won't get any hardware acceleration from your video card to help offload from cpu

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: BassBomb
If you are going to use VLC you won't get any hardware acceleration from your video card to help offload from cpu

I didn't notice the mention of VLC. I think he can use the VLC card with different media software. If that's the case, then he just needs to choose a good media software that allows for hardware acceleration.

 

[Heller]

Originally posted by: kalrith

Originally posted by: BassBomb
If you are going to use VLC you won't get any hardware acceleration from your video card to help offload from cpu

I didn't notice the mention of VLC. I think he can use the VLC card with different media software. If that's the case, then he just needs to choose a good media software that allows for hardware acceleration.

please elaborate.

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: Heller

Originally posted by: kalrith

Originally posted by: BassBomb
If you are going to use VLC you won't get any hardware acceleration from your video card to help offload from cpu

I didn't notice the mention of VLC. I think he can use the VLC card with different media software. If that's the case, then he just needs to choose a good media software that allows for hardware acceleration.

please elaborate.

Well, according to Bassbomb (I didn't confirm his statement), if you use VLC as your media software, then you won't get hardware acceleration from your video card. If you bought a card like the 4550 and did get hardware acceleration, then it would take practically all the video-processing workload off of your cpu. This AT review should put this into better perspective. The first benchmark on that page shows the CPU utilization at 20.2% with the 8600 GT and hardware acceleration; whereas no hardware acceleration rockets the CPU utilization to 88.1%. In the case of your slower CPU, a lack of hardware acceleration will probably mean the lack of the ability to play HD video files.

Basically your media card (like practically all of them) came with software that you shouldn't use. There are some great free media centers out there: MediaPortal (what I use) and GB PVR. If you have Windows Media Center, then you can use that as well. Any of those should be able to be set up to use hardware acceleration. You might even be able to get a player that's less involved than a media center and will do hardware acceleration, but I've never looked into any of those before. I basically set up MediaPortal according to this guide, and it plays every file I throw at it with my 9500GT.