hi

i just built a system with the following spec:

antec fusion case
asus m2npv-vm mobo
athlon x2 3600+
2x512mb pc2-6400
250gb sata hdd
samsung lightscribe dvd-rw

using the onboard nvidia 6150, i am having an issue playing full screen
video in wmp 11, with many dropped frames. i was thinking of putting in a
pci-e graphics card anyway, but

a) will a card cure this problem (i realise this may not be the right ng for
this question)

b) i was looking at the xfx 7800gt, which i can get for under £70. is there
a better option for vista?

thanks a lot.

regards
keith

Keith wrote:
If you press control-alt-delete, and bring up the Task Manager, then play
the video, is the CPU running at 100% ? Maybe what you are trying to do
is CPU limited. That is the first test I'd do.

Are all the necessary drivers in place ? If you benchmark the system,
do you get similar figures to what other people get ?

Certain kinds of video content can be accelerated by a video card. There
is the basic accleration, which has been available on video GPUs for some
time (IDCT inverse discrete cosine transform or perhaps motion estimation).
But some cards now have video decoding engines, which can help a bit more.
This is still a technology that is less than mature, and not all situations
are covered by acceleration.

This page addresses high definition (HD) playback.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/purevideo_hd_faq.html

A quick comparison of video acceleration on Nvidia cards:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2970&p=3

H.264 acceleration here looks pretty good. But what you're
doing, might not be covered, so I'd want to see more of
the video types tested:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2977&p=4

This page would be for the older, regular definition playback. Note
that not all possible CODECs are mentioned in the second page. I don't
know the video standards well enough to tell you which important ones
are missing. Purevideo support does not accelerate too much of the
playback process, so maybe the cards here, help by 10-20% or so.
So a saturated processor, might still be saturated. The cards with
HD support, are supposed to handle a bit more of the decoding process
(see the diagram on the Anandtech page, for which additional steps
are included in the programmable video engine).

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

CPU loading with various acceleration options. The 8500 and 8600
were not included in this article, and the 8500 and 8600 are
*supposed* to be better than the 8800 family for this.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...layback_6.html

ATI fights back, with Powerpoint slides :-)

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...tecture_9.html

I would say your best bet, it to look to an 8500/8600 card ($100/$130
for the cheapest ones). They may not be the ultimate gamers cards, but
they do have some more video acceleration. In terms of driver development,
you might get more attention with a more modern card, than with an older
one.

I's still waiting for a head to head comparison of this years
cards. Maybe Xbitlabs will do a followup article some day.

Another note. Sometimes, certain playback standards have an associated
licensing fee. Manufacturers don't want to increase the product price,
if not everyone will be using the feature. Thus, you end up forking out
for additional software. (I'm not a video junkie, and don't know which
of these is needed for just viewing DVDs or for other usage. This
is just another gotcha to look out for.)

http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html
http://www.cyberlink.com/cinema/ati/.../enu/index.jsp

Paul

thanks very much for the replies

regards
keith

Yes, that video card would solve your problem with the UNDER powered onboard
video chip.

--
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DaveW
"Keith" <xxxx (AT) xxxx (DOT) xxxx> wrote