assume fresh install of windows, latest drivers, and no other programs running what would be the minimum you would need to run smoothly: 720p or 1080i or 1080p right now im just trying to get 720p running smoothly on an Athlon 2500XP with 2GB RAM and a Radeon 9600 Pro. i find it difficult to believe that it has great difficulty running this smoothly, so im wondering where to go from here... in other words, is that a hopeless task, do i need a faster CPU, faster vid card, or is something just not working right
Radeon 9600 can only partially accelerate HD encoded video, relying on the processor for most of it. Add audio into the equation and the result will either be dropped frames galore or a slide-show. I've tried numerous tweaks on a very similar setup with R9600; ensuring that DXVA and WMV acceleration were enabled, following ATI's recommendation to use High Quality mode in Windows Media Player 11, but there was no improvement. IIRC, the same HD clips played much better using PowerDVD 6.0, though still not flawless. You'll need a significantly more powerful CPU, a more powerful GPU with HD decoding support, or both.
not true at all. srry but my rig : ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP-M 2400+ 1GB DDR400 RAM NVIDIA 6600 plays 720p video without a single dropped frame. what you need is a better decoder. i suggest you download coreavc. it is the best decoder i've seen. my rig plays 720p x264 video without a single dropped frame. yours should be able to do the same. edit: download the k-lite mega codec pack. it includes coreavc and many other codecs.
I would say the GF 6600 qualifies as a 'better GPU and/or decoder' in and of itself. GF6600 is a 2nd Gen DX9 GPU and significantly more powerful than R9600, particularly in pixel shader and fill-rate performance. GF6600 has twice as many pixel pipelines as R9600 and supports HD H.264/WMV decoding via PureVideo. R9600's video decoder is only optimized for standard definition MPEG2/WMV. I have a GF6600 here that I would test but its PCI Express and my R9600 setup is AGP. As I said, 720p playback was much improved with PowerDVD, even watchable, though still not flawless. 1080p clips were unwatchable no matter which application I used.
Do you have proof of these dropped frames? Mind you that there's no utility capable of measuring dropped frames for decoding video.
also depends on what codec. mpeg4 is easier to play than h264. hdwmv also easier to play than h264. atleast from my experience but thats cpu decoding. h264 + dual core is enough to playback with just cpu though. esp with efficient decoders like coreavc or whatever uses dual core to decode. xp 2500 is very slow. while back i had a ~3200+xp and it choked on 1080p hdwmv and apples trailers. 720p is what those slow cpu's can pull. lower bitrate hdwmv your cpu should be able to do. not sure about h264.
Huh? Every full-featured decoder I'm aware of has built-in statistics for bit-rate, frame rate, dropped frames, et. al. Here are the results for two of Microsoft's WMV-HD 720p clips using WMP11: http://s89934018.onlinehome.us...es/720p_wmv_corral.PNG http://s89934018.onlinehome.us...s/720p_wmv_fighter.PNG Both peg the CPU @ 90% ~ 100% utilization. Oddly, the second clip is much higher bit-rate but it plays smoothly with no dropped frames if I disable audio and don't touch the mouse (literally). I can't get the first clip (lower bit-rate) to play without dropping frames or 'glitching' no matter what, which is typical of most 720p HD clips I've played. 1080p is a slide-show. System Information Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 System Model: KT600-8237 Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2500+, MMX, 3DNow, 1.83GHz Memory: 1024MB RAM Card name: ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600/9700 Series (AGP 8x) Display Memory: 128.0 MB Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (75Hz) Driver Version: Catalyst 7.4
the clip i remember would rape cpu most was coral reef adventure 1080p. http://www.microsoft.com/windo...o/contentshowcase.aspx
The industry is not trying very hard to put out efficient HD DVD software. This is by design to force people to upgrade to more powerful hardware. Let's take a look at the home HD DVD player. Are we to believe that this box is more powerful than a modern PC? Time and competition will eventually lower the requirement of CPU and GPU.
the set top players use custom decoder chips. you still aren't going to get an old 2500xp system to run 1080p h264 though. coreavc is the most efficient software decoder i know of and it requires more. there isn't a conspiracy really. 1080p is a lot of data. get the radeon 2600xt in my above link, it might work since it accelerates decode quite a bit. and yea i know, vc1 is slightly easier to decode. but there is competition, between cyberilnk powerdvd and intervideo windvd do compete in software and they have no desire to force people to buy hardware really. look at their record on dvd. when dvd first came out people bought dvd decoder cards for their pc, seriously. i had one and it was junk, but it wasn't soon before i got a better cpu solution from powerdvd. CoreAVC? for Windows * 800 MHz Intel Pentium class or faster processor * At least 256MB of RAM * Windows 98, 2000 or XP CoreAVC? for Windows @ 480p video at 24 frames per second * 1.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or faster processor * At least 256MB of RAM * 64MB or greater video card * Windows 98, 2000 or XP CoreAVC? for Windows @ 720p video at 24-30 frames per second * 2.2 GHz Pentium 4 or faster processor * At least 512MB of RAM * 128MB or greater video card * Windows 98, 2000 or XP CoreAVC? for Windows @ 1080p video at 24-30 frames per second * 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 or faster processor * At least 1GB of RAM * 256MB or greater video card * Windows 98, 2000 or XP http://www.coreavc.com/index.p...sk=view&id=28&Itemid=1
