Getting HD to run on gf3

[weaksauce]

My friend has a lousy computer with celeron 2.0ghz, 512mb ram and gf3ti200 64mb. And I want to run HD movies on it. But performance is bad since it seems the CPU has to take all of it. Is it possible to decode te movies wit the GPU and if so how do I achieve that with gf3?

Really I don't see a problem why it shouldn't be able to, since my laptop with pentium m 1.6ghz, 512 ram and 16mb intel extreme2 (shared with ram) can handle it.

 

[chavvdarrr]

My friend has a lousy computer with celeron 2.0ghz, 512mb ram and gf3ti200 64mb. And I want to run HD movies on it. But performance is bad since it seems the CPU has to take all of it. Is it possible to decode te movies wit the GPU and if so how do I achieve that with gf3?

Really I don't see a problem why it shouldn't be able to, since my laptop with pentium m 1.6ghz, 512 ram and 16mb intel extreme2 (shared with ram) can handle it.

because P-M 1.6 is faster than P4-Celeron at 2.0

 

[weaksauce]

because P-M 1.6 is faster than P4-Celeron at 2.0

Even an athlon 2200+? That setup didn't work either.

 

[chavvdarrr]

Even an athlon 2200+? That setup didn't work either.

well, I'm not sure st what frequency k7 2200+ is working - it depends on the model/memory speed, etc, but yes, I'll bet in raw speed its:
P-M 1.6 > K7 2200+(probably at 1.8M ?) > Cel 2000

But it also depends on what codecs are you trying to use. As GF3 has no hardware HD acceleration, you need software codec - and if it works or not will depend heavily on codecs optimisation, ie for what CPu it was tuned.

Last I tried HD content on PC, afaik the best codec was CoreAVC, but it wasn't freeware. Maybe ffdshow is good enough now, maybe not.

 

[Davros]

microsofts specs for hd video

Minimum Configuration
(to play 720p video)
Windows XP
Windows Media Player 9 Series
2.4 GHz processor or equivalent
384 MB of RAM
64 MB video card
DVD drive
1024 x 768 screen resolution
16-bit sound card
Speakers


Optimum Configuration
(to play 1080p video with 5.1 surround sound)
Windows XP
Windows Media Player 9 Series
DirectX 9.0
3.0 GHz processor or equivalent
512 MB of RAM
128 MB video card
DVD drive
1920 x 1440 screen resolution
24-bit 96 kHz multichannel sound card
5.1 surround sound speaker system

 

[Blazkowicz]

that's a pentium 4 celeron with 128K L2 cache, probably the worst intel CPU ever. it overclocks like mad but performance still sucks! (I remember how a celeron 1.7 clocked at 3.2GHz and still could be beaten by a < 2GHz pentium 4)
you can always try o/c, I believe video decoding scales well with frequency even on sucky CPUs.
you might get it decode 720p WMV (it works well on my XP2400+. 1080p WMV or 720p H264/AVC are unwatchable. 720p xvid should be fine)

(XP 2200+ is 1.8GHz, and 2400+ is 2.0GHz)

 

[Rainbow Man]

probably the worst intel CPU ever.

Hm.

I'd say the 80286 was probably even worse. 16-bit architecture.. No cavches at all.. No FPU. Only 8 registers.

Meanwhile during roughly the same time period Motorola offered the 68020 which featured full 32-bit support and caches and more (FPU on external chip though).
Peace.

 

[chavvdarrr]

Hm.

I'd say the 80286 was probably even worse. 16-bit architecture.. No cavches at all.. No FPU. Only 8 registers.

Meanwhile during roughly the same time period Motorola offered the 68020 which featured full 32-bit support and caches and more (FPU on external chip though).
Peace.

Why not 8088? Way slower than 8086
Not to mention 80386SX, or the original "celeron" - Covington (gash, I even forgot its name, had to dig the net, after all it was "mendocino or bust" )

 

[Davros]

the 386sx was ok want nearly as bad as covington or how about the cyrix 586 especially for quake

 

[Blazkowicz]

yes the original celeron 300 was terrible but didn't last long, maybe it's a collector item now.
the celeron P4 gets more fun when paired with SDRAM.. it can be as slow as a P3 700.

 

[chavvdarrr]

the 386sx was ok want nearly as bad as covington or how about the cyrix 586 especially for quake

mmm If I remember right, in days of Q1, the video was very important too - I had a friend with Cyrix P200+, who played the game - in the beginning he had ET6000 and it was so-so, then he got Riva128 the play was wayyy better. Or he had a crappy S3 Trio32 replaced by the Tzeng one?! Ahhh, memories... 6000 with 2.25MB of Ram running 1024x768x24

 

[Davros]

quake didnt care too much about video cards i went from a 256k cirrus logic to a 4mb matrox mystique (the 2nd fastest 2d card aound at the time) and the difference wasnt huge
everything was done on the cpu the problem with the cyrix was twofold the speed was just a rating eg: a 120 ran at 100mhz and it also had no floating point unit all fp code (which quake used extensively) had to be emulated

 

[chavvdarrr]

and it also had no floating point unit all fp code (which quake used extensively) had to be emulated

you are wrong - it had FPU, but it was slow compared to the one in Pentium - afaik it was on par with 486fpu, not to forget that 586 was , in fact, a 686 intended to be plugged into socket3
It had great integer performance and crappy FPU - and PR rating was based solely on integer performance

 

[Davros]

I am wrong

i was recalling from memory what i read in a magazine about the 686 back in the days

or am i getting mixed up with the nexgen, remember that one