Needed laptop speed to play VCDs?

Big C

Junior Member
Jan 5, 2000
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I'm going to be moving to China and I've been thinking about buying a laptop to play VCDs on. How fast of a processor would I need? What about for DIVX movies?
thanks for the tech help.
Big C
 

Vapour

Member
Dec 12, 1999
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You could most likely get by with a 450Mhz system just for playback of Divx. VCD's, which are mpg1 files, could probably play with a bit less.
 

Erasmus-X

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 1999
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For the most part, you can watch just about any VCD with a 200 MHz or faster processor. This is only MPEG-1 compression we're talking about here....

 

bigshooter

Platinum Member
Oct 12, 1999
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If you want a good Divx performance, I'd go at least 500-600mhz. 450 would be ok for mpeg 2.
 

JackBurton

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
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<< If you want a good Divx performance, I'd go at least 500-600mhz. 450 would be ok for mpeg 2. >>


That is a pretty good estimate. However, I'd recommend 800MHz-1GHz if you are doing super high res divx with super high bit rates. But most DivX movie you can get by with a 600MHz system.
 

Budman

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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Enough with the DIVX talk, he was asking about VCD (mpeg-1) .

Like Erasmus-X said almost any laptop will be able to play them easy. unless it's a 486.;)

a low end pentium will play it nicely,so dont worry.


 

guzik

Member
Nov 4, 2001
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I have laptop with P2/366MHz/192MB RAM and:
- don't have any problem with VCD playback
- to watch DIVX smoothly I have to: 1) close all non-essential applications
2) resize screen to 800x600
3) change color depth to 16-bit
So, I'd say that p2/366 is not much under the speed limit for playback of divx files, probably P3/500+ will do without trouble.
As mentioned by many, for just VCD everything better than 486 should work just fine
 

guzik

Member
Nov 4, 2001
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One more thing:
Hardware in HK stores costs about the same as on Internet here. Actually if you have time and patience, you can find some coupon/rebate/sale opportunities less available out there. Just make sure PS supports both 110/220V and 50/60MHz. I never had problem with ThinkPads, just carried set of plug adapters with me.
 

thorin

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
7,573
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I was able to play VCDs (mpeg 1) when I bought my Pentium 133. For DiVx (mpeg4) you'll need roughly a P2 450 or better.

Thorin
 

AnitaPeterson

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2001
5,963
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My Toshiba Satellite 430 (Pentium 133, 48 RAM, 1.2 GB HD) plays VCDs without any problems - but I have NEVER tried Divx on it.