What hardware do I need to upgrade?

[oostertoaster]

Hi guys,
I recently bought a 40" Samsung HDTV to replace my SDTV set (yay for black friday!) When I connected by GBPVR PC to the TV and reconfigured it to display 1080p, I noticed that video playback stutters slightly. This was not an issue with my previous TV, and I'm assuming that it is because my hardware is not adequate to fully display 1080p (1920 x 1080) TV. My current setup is listed at the end of this post.

My question is: What component(s) do I need to upgrade? My wife just gave birth a few weeks ago, so I'm definitely on a limited budget. My first thought was to increase the RAM, but I'm not sure if that is the limiting factor, or if my video card is bogging down. At the moment I'm not sure if I have the budget to upgrade both. If you guys could give me your thoughts, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!!

Current setup:
Processor:AMD Athlon X2 4050e Brisbane (2.0 GHz)
RAM: 1 GB DDR2 (DDR2 800, if it matters)
Graphics card: 256 MB NVIDIA 7200GS
Hard Drive: 300 GB SATA II

[Graham]

This might help ...

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=44635

[235301]

Just some thoughts from my experiences as I have a rather low end system, much lower than you have:

-Turning off the task manager helped tremendously. It was probably the single biggest thing to remove the HD stuttering.
-The Cyberlink SP codec seems to work best on my system, even better than nVidia PureVideo.
-Keep your video card cool. Once it starts overheating(as mine did) it started to throttle back and thus the stuttering started.
-Set the resolution of your display to exactly 1080p. The video card then doesn't need to scale on the fly and is displaying at exactly the resolution that the HD video is putting out.
-I use FSE on XP. And make sure hardware acceleration is turned on for whatever codec you are using.

I'm sure there are plenty of other good suggestions.

[oostertoaster]

I hadn't even considered the mux's and codecs. I'm currently using Purevideo and the TS Mux. Also, my tuner is an HVR-2250. Is it more likely that my codecs/setup needs to be tweaked, rather than upgrading my hardware?

Just some thoughts from my experiences as I have a rather low end system, much lower than you have:

-Turning off the task manager helped tremendously. It was probably the single biggest thing to remove the HD stuttering.
-The Cyberlink SP codec seems to work best on my system, even better than nVidia PureVideo.
-Keep your video card cool. Once it starts overheating(as mine did) it started to throttle back and thus the stuttering started.
-Set the resolution of your display to exactly 1080p. The video card then doesn't need to scale on the fly and is displaying at exactly the resolution that the HD video is putting out.
-I use FSE on XP. And make sure hardware acceleration is turned on for whatever codec you are using.

I'm sure there are plenty of other good suggestions.

[hoborg]

My hardware tip:
*MotherBoard: Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H - AMD 785G (ATI HD4200)
*CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 240e

Software:
*WinXP + FSE
*SAF (link below)

[whurlston]

All your components are fine for 1080 with the exception of the video card. The 7200 just doesn't have the horsepower. You can get an ATI 3450 for about $30-35 or an ATI 4670 for about $65. The 4670 is the better option but the 3450 will suffice if you need to spend less money.

Congrats on the baby.

[ilovejedd]

All your components are fine for 1080 with the exception of the video card. The 7200 just doesn't have the horsepower. You can get an ATI 3450 for about $30-35 or an ATI 4670 for about $65. The 4670 is the better option but the 3450 will suffice if you need to spend less money.

I bought a $35 Sapphire Radeon HD4550 512MB (low-profile) to replace my older HD3450. That's probably a better option given similar pricing.

[hoborg]

I bought a $35 Sapphire Radeon HD4550 512MB (low-profile) to replace my older HD3450. That's probably a better option given similar pricing.

Agree, i have it too (famless)

[psycik]

Personally NVidia all the way here, have heard many a problem with the ATI based cards. But does depend on the video being played, whether it's H.264 based or MPEG2 based.

[oostertoaster]

Is this the card you guys are talking about?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product


How hot does the card run? My current 7200GS is fanless as well, and I'd prefer to stay that way. However I don't want to introduce a lot of additional heat into the case, since it is fairly cramped and only has one airflow fan.

Agree, i have it too (famless)