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Thread: HD video on my computer

  1. #1
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    HD video on my computer

    Hi, all.

    I'm wondering if my system is powerful enough to play HD video. The hardware is somewhat light-ish, but it seems to me that it ought to be able to.

    My system specs are
    • Athlon XP-M 3000+ processor (2.2 GHz)
    • 1.5 GiB RAM
    • nVidia GeForce FX 5200 GPU (which I don't think will support VDPAU)


    I have one HD video file (720p) I got to use for testing. If I disable visual effects, it will play, but will hang/freeze for a second or two a few times a minute. That's pretty annoying. If I don't disable visual effects, the video just hangs from the beginning.

    So, is that as good as I'm going to do, or is there something I can do to make it play properly?

    Thanks!

  2. #2
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    Re: HD video on my computer

    I can tell you right now it is the card. I have that same card and I really should not have bought the card. It really was not meant on handling anything intense. If possible I would upgrade your video card.


  3. #3
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    Re: HD video on my computer

    Upgrading the video card isn't really an option. For a start, the card is already the newest and most modern piece of technology on my system, so I probably won't get another card until I upgrade the whole shebang.

    I have had pretty good performance out of the card other than this. Visual effects run OK.

    Aside from changing my hardware, is there anything I can do to get this to play better? Any other software that I can install or config settings I can change?

  4. #4
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    Re: HD video on my computer

    To be honest I'm not sure, I really don't think there is much else you can do. Maybe another person from the community here can suggest something. Im afraid I have run out of ideas for your issue. Im sorry


  5. #5
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    Exclamation Re: HD video on my computer

    "In April 2003, Nvidia introduced the mid-range GeForce FX 5600 and budget GeForce FX 5200 models to address the other market segments."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_Series

    Can't expect much from a $25.00 card that is 7 years old - sorry.
    State of the art is the "GeForce 300" and future 400.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_300_Series

    What type of PC and what type of hardware interface for graphics?
    Ubuntu 16.04-Dell P390,Pentium D 3.4G,4G R,NVIDIA GT360
    Ubuntu 16.04-Dell DE520,Pentium D 2.80G, 3G R,NVIDIA GeForce9500GT
    Ubuntu 18.04-Dell PM90,Intel T2600 2.1G,4G R,NVIDIA Quadro FX 500M
    Ubuntu 18.04-HP 15-F233wm,Celeron N3050 1.6G,4G R,Intel HD

  6. #6
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    Re: HD video on my computer

    Quote Originally Posted by emarkay View Post
    What type of PC and what type of hardware interface for graphics?
    Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question.

  7. #7
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    Re: HD video on my computer

    Quote Originally Posted by gldearman View Post
    Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question.
    What he means is - does the graphics card connect via PCI express, PCI, or AGP. You'd have to look inside the PC to find out, and you can do this by looking at the connector that the graphics card connects to on the motherboard. It will be fairly obvious which one it is after googling in google images for pci/agp/pci express slot. Good luck.

    By the way - that card would never be able to play HD video without stuttering. You need to upgrade mate.
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  8. #8
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    Re: HD video on my computer

    Quote Originally Posted by fela View Post
    By the way - that card would never be able to play HD video without stuttering.
    Well, that would answer the original question. Thanks for stating that clearly.

    Googling around a little more, I'm finding a lot of people agreeing with you, and a handful of people saying that they can view 720p (or even 1080i) on the same card. So, I may play around with the driver settings some and see what I can get. But it isn't a high priority priority for me; I just wanted to see if it was possible.

    Don't know how the card connects to the motherboard (PCI, I'm pretty sure), and I'm not at my home machine right now, so I can't check. May check later, if anyone thinks that this is going to help. But it doesn't look like it will.

  9. #9
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    Re: HD video on my computer

    Quote Originally Posted by gldearman View Post
    Don't know how the card connects to the motherboard (PCI, I'm pretty sure), and I'm not at my home machine right now, so I can't check. May check later, if anyone thinks that this is going to help. But it doesn't look like it will.
    Well I'm pretty sure I can tell you for a fact that it wouldn't be PCI express. I actually have an FX-5200 in an old machine of mine that connects via PCI but they were also made for AGP so it could be either. I don't really see how the bus (connector) is relevant to the matter though to be honest. Maybe fiddling with the driver settings would squeeze a bit of extra performance...if you can be bothered. I don't really think you'd be able to get that much more out of an old banger like that. By the way, I tested that old machine I was talking about a few days ago and as a matter of fact it can (at least in my case) play a 720p matroska (mkv) movie encoded as H.264 (and AC3 audio not that it matters) - so I take back that point about playing HD, or more to the point what I meant was full HD (1080p). The CPU was a Pentium 4 hyperthreading 2.8GHz model with 512MB RAM. I also tried it with 1080p for a laugh and the program just froze.
    Last edited by fela; May 13th, 2010 at 12:00 AM.
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