question about 4850 and HD (bluray) playback

[Vesper8]

Hi everyone.

So my uncle's got this fairly old computer. It's about 3 and a half years old. It's got a 3200+ with 1gb of ram. It's mainly only used as a HTPC to watch video on the living room TV.

Last year I got him a ATI 2600HD for his HD playback needs. It does ok but it really begins to play sluggishly once you throw anything 1080p at it. Or if you try to play very large files (in excess of 10gb per file) even if it's a 720p video.

Recently I got him a couple of blu-ray rips (25gb per disc) and those also play quite sluggishly.

Anyway the thing is he doesn't want to upgrade the whole computer. So here's my question. Will replacing that 2600HD by a brand new 4850 512mb make a BIG difference as far as HD playback goes?

I figure it just might.. because I've noticed that when I play HD movies on his computer the CPU itself isn't being used a lot if barely at all. But I could be wrong. So please let me know your feedback.

Thanks a lot!

 

[jkresh]

I would say that the hd decode capabilities on the 4850 are significantly better then on the 2600, but if the cpu is not showing a lot of use in playing hd now then offloading more to the gpu may not help that much. Since you are playing rips off the hard drive what drive does he have (ide or sata and 5400 or 7200rpm?) , if the cpu is not showing a lot of use then adding more memory or a faster hard drive might make more of an impact then a more powerful gpu or cpu would, though a 3200+ is near the bottom for 1080p so ...

 

[Vesper8]

Well I am using one of those new terrabyte drives that are 5400-7200 (variable RPM). I didn't think this would play much of a factor since I figured that even a 5400 would be able to output data fast enough. How come applications like Gomplayer and KMplayer aren't using his CPU that much anyway? I was surprised how it stayed in the low 20% during playback.

Anyway.. thanks for your feedback, I would appreciate more feedback from different people who might have experienced this kind of upgrade on this kind of older rig. Basically what it comes down to is I know I won't be convincing him to upgrade his whole system (MB, Ram and CPU) so I really need to decide if just upgrading the video card is going to make most of his sluggish performance go away.

I could definately move those HD files to 7200 rpm drives as well. All of them are SATA btw.

 

[Spicedaddy]

Just check CPU usage in Task Manager when playing 1080p stuff, if it's not that high then the CPU isn't the problem. Also, make sure DMA is enabled for that hard drive.

I have a 3870 and CPU usage when playing 1080p stuff is 0-2%, and I'm sure the 4850 is better.

 

[ViRGE]

There's no reason why a 2600 should be sluggish at HD video playback. It's capable of fully offloading decoding, save some decryption functions. Replacing it with a 4850 won't change this. I'd look at the CPU usage of your setup and the decoding chain; either it's a decoder that's just outright buggy, or for some reason it's maxing out the CPU.

 

[Vesper8]

It plays video playback fine.... it's only when you throw 1080p at it that it becomes sluggish. Only when the filesize is really big. Beijing opening ceremony, 720p, 28GB single file, for example, is sluggish because it's huge. Planet Earth blu-ray, 25gb per disc, 8gb per stream file, is also sluggish because it's 1080p.

Isn't the 4850 much better at decoding 1080p content then the 2600?

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Vesper8
It plays video playback fine.... it's only when you throw 1080p at it that it becomes sluggish. Only when the filesize is really big. Beijing opening ceremony, 720p, 28GB single file, for example, is sluggish because it's huge. Planet Earth blu-ray, 25gb per disc, 8gb per stream file, is also sluggish because it's 1080p.

Isn't the 4850 much better at decoding 1080p content then the 2600?

No, it isn't, and that's pretty much my point.