Hardware upgrade to play 1080p Movies

[anilthomas26]

Hi,

I bought a new Samsung 2233SW monitor.I tried to play some HD movies.I can play the 720p movies without any problem,but cant play 1080p movies smoothly.

My 4 year old PC's config is:

AMD Athlon 3000+
MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum
1 GB DDR1
Leadtek 6600GT

Which one should I upgrade to play the 1080p movies?

[VarDOS]

i think its all about graphics, i say upgrade u r RAM as well as graphics, or it will cause bottle-neck

[surinder]

Although you can escape upgrading only GPU but If you can upgrade your platform as well (at least up to AM2) you will be batter served.

[drvarunmehta]

If you upgrade the CPU you will have to change the mobo and the RAM as well. If you can do that then great otherwise the cheapest and easiest option is to upgrade just the graphics card.

[desiibond]

I think a 9500GT for 2.5k-3k should be enough.

[anilthomas26]

I cant upgrade my Motherboard now.

My motherboard supports 939 pin AMD processor....Which is the best 939 pin AMD processor ,for my case?

[drvarunmehta]

Socket 939 CPU's are not available in the market. Best chance is to get a secondhand dualcore CPU on eBay, or get the graphics card as recommended above.

[acewin]

any HD4670 or 9500GT

[acewin]

what PSU u own. I hope the upgrade does not give ur PSU problem.

no need to upgrade mobo, its quiet good, just get RAM chips so that u have 2GB RAM in total.ade RAM to ahve 2GB in total, if u got 512MB sticks then buy two 1 GB RAM chips.

u have One PCI Express X16 slot, so if ur PSU holds u can get a 9600GT too.

[j1n M@tt]

6600GT is more than enuf for 1080p HD videos. Everyone usually decodes HD in software mode using CPU, even if they hav a powerful GPU. Install a gud HD codec and configure it to use ur grfx card. According to me, installing K-Lite is the best, it's free and uses less system resource.


* If u don't hav K-Lite codec, download it and install from here. Choose standard, basic or full pack according to you preference.

* After installing K-Lite codec, from start menu select ffdvideoshow video decoder under configuration sub menu under K-Lite Codec Pack. In the ffdvideo configuration window set the decoder to Disabled for H.264/AVC.





* Now open Media Player Classic and open its Options by pressing key 'O'.
Make the following changes as shown below for the Playback>Output :





Now either u can use Media Player Classic or Windows Media Player for playing 1080p videos. There are many more options that u can optimize for GPU decoding, you will learn it by urself if u can spend some time around the configuration options.