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Media PC min spec

  • 02-10-2005 9:33pm
    #1
    RicardoSmith
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,264 ✭✭✭


    What spec of PC do you reckon is the min for a media PC. I have a P3/733 that I was experimenting with but even small DivX movies seem to playback too slowly. It has almost 400mb of ram but only onboard gfx, an Intel 82815 chipset. I only want to use it as a PVR for PAL stuff. Do you reckon if I added a decent TV card would that be enough, or is this PC simply too slow?

    Windows XP runs fine on it, because of all the RAM.


Comments

  • #2
    Endurance Man
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,240 ✭✭✭Endurance Man


    I would say add more ram and get a decent graphics card. Even an FX 5200 would do you, they cheap cheap :).


  • #3
    RicardoSmith
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,264 ✭✭✭RicardoSmith


    Why do you think it is ram? Why a 3D card for 2D video? If anything I would have thought a ATI card with MPEG encoder/decoder onboard might help like an old AIW card. But it wouldn't help with DivX would it?


  • #4
    Laguna
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,639 ✭✭✭Laguna


    If it's DivX that's really slow for you on your current setup, I'd say it's safe to say that, no a better graphics card won't do a lot for you, it's the processor that does the bulk of the work when it comes to media.


  • #5
    SouperComputer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭SouperComputer


    Graphics card will do SFA unless you get a Radeon as they have hardware acellerated support for DIVX. The card itself has little bearing on the video other than this. Even a PCI 7000 card would make a difference.

    PIII 700 should be Okay for divx playback, but not great. It depends on the res of the video. Recording with that is not going to be great, of course you can use an MPEG 2 card, but thats a bit old school. Ideally you want to be recording on the fly in MPEG 4

    I would say aim for above 2Ghz CPU if you plan playing or recording with Hi-Def in the future.


  • #6
    mukki
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,669 ✭✭✭mukki


    it should play fine, i have an 833 with 256mb ram and a geforce2, and it plays divx fine, cpu usage does be stuck at about 90% though

    check your task manager and see which process is using how much cpu power

    try installing all updates from windows update, software and hardware drivers


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  • #7
    RicardoSmith
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,264 ✭✭✭RicardoSmith


    Maybe a GFX card would make a difference. I'll see if my 9700Pro works in it, and see if it makes a difference.


  • #8
    SouperComputer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭SouperComputer


    RicardoSmith wrote:
    Maybe a GFX card would make a difference. I'll see if my 9700Pro works in it, and see if it makes a difference.

    It should do, not because its a faster card, but because it supports Divx hardware acceleration. You will have to change a setting in your Divx playback prefs to take advantage of this though.


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