VIA EPIA-MII12000: wont do 1080p

[quizzelbuck]

i bought a VIA EPIA-MII12000 which has a 1.2 ghz processor on it. I wanted a media center that could play any thing i threw at it. Any 1080p file i throw at it chugs and maxes out the CPU. Does a decoder card exist that will throw the high def processing off the CPU? It can be PCI, or USB if thats even possible.

 

[v8envy]

No luck over PCI, no luck over USB. The amount of data in a decoded 1080p stream is more than the total bandwidth available over PCI, never mind USB2. A 1.2 ghz Via CPU is about an 1ghz pentium III equivalent. Hardly worldshaking performance in 2008, but plenty to play back standard definition DVDs and media files.

Your best bet is to re-build with something including a 16x PCIe slot, and at least a HD2400Pro video card. If you go the pure CPU route I know neither my X3210 at 2.66 ghz or E2180 at 3ghz have any trouble playing back HD DVDs with just rudimentary hardware acceleration.

 

[quizzelbuck]

Thank you. That was helpful.