Does hardware effect playback?

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **Bushido Philosopher** » Thu Aug 08, 2002 10:20 pm

I'm all new to the whole hardware stuff. My forte is DVD ripping and conversion.

Does the hardware I have affect the playback of videos?....Or more, what hardware involves video? Graphics card, what's that?

Flame me if you will, but at least answer my question, okay? (I feel like a newbie all over again)

kthulhu · Post by **kthulhu** » Fri Aug 09, 2002 12:20 am

Hardware can affect playback. Especially if they're super compressive formats like DivX and Realmedia. Usually a 300 mhz or above comp can handle them just fine. A good videocard helps also, especially if it's AGP.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Fri Aug 09, 2002 10:30 am

Well really it the thing that really affect video speed is usually the CPU.

You could have a really shitty PCI video card on a 200Mhz machine and nothing would play, put that video card in a 600Mhz machine and you'll likely have no problems playing back at all.

AGP really was meant for letting the video card use system memory for video memory(thus the video card can use as much memory as the system has), which is insanely slow so it's not used. Which is why we see cards out with 128MB of ram on them.

AGP does have other benefits, but it really doesn't play much part with your 2D playback.... KTHULU!!!

so there...

~klinky

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Fri Aug 09, 2002 10:32 am

ugh... that makes no sense....

I am mainly speaking of DivX. MPEG1 is known to playback fine on even 486s!

DivX is much more intensive. So on a 200Mhz machine you could probably play things like MPEG1, Indeo, CinePack , but not the l33ter MPEG2 or MPEG4 type codecs(DVDs or the many DivX flavors).

~klinky

kthulhu · Post by **kthulhu** » Fri Aug 09, 2002 6:01 pm

AGP reduces latency. Or so I hear. God knows that PCI ATI Rage Pro was a piece of slow ass shit in my K6-2 500. If I had an AGP version I bet it woud've been faster.

Melfina · Post by **Melfina** » Fri Aug 09, 2002 6:26 pm

Of course a AGP card is going to be better than the pci version. How does your hardware effect your video playback?? Well most movie players use direct show. But depending on the video, playback shouldn't go above 30 fps, which in effect is all cpu. If you are having problems with video feedback you might consider buying a $100 on ebay because its bound to be better than what youve got.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Fri Aug 09, 2002 7:35 pm

kthulhu wrote:AGP reduces latency. Or so I hear. God knows that PCI ATI Rage Pro was a piece of slow ass shit in my K6-2 500. If I had an AGP version I bet it woud've been faster.

I think it was because of shitty drives in Win2k, it worked pretty good Win98.. remember

~klinky

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Fri Aug 09, 2002 7:35 pm

err that should be drivers

~klinky

Melfina · Post by **Melfina** » Sat Aug 10, 2002 1:17 am

Spend the 20 bucks to buy some stupid ati card, shove it in, get the new drivers, and you can play video...i mean like a 8meg pci graphics card can do video...maybe not that stupid windows media wooshey graphics thing...but it will play movies

kthulhu · Post by **kthulhu** » Sat Aug 10, 2002 1:20 am

I have a Geforce 2 GTS in a Duron 600 box now, so video performance is not an issue for me anymore.