Full 1080p videos on pc (Processor or video card?)

[neworldman]

I am getting ready to buy a new Dell for use with my home network. I only want to spend $300 to $400 or so. I have been doing research on these new Dell 560,570,580 Inspiron systems. The prices can't be beat $299 free shipping. I just want to be able to play full HD videos 1920 x 1080p on my VLC player with these. All the search says the video card will do it. But what is more important for playing full had files video card or CPU? I have two i7 980x with XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 cards in them. They of coarse play full HD stuff fine. But i don't want or need such a monster pc again. Need one just for web searching and playing videos off of my home network from my HD media players and hard drives. I know a gigabit ethernet card is a must but CPU and video card not sure. Want the cheapest.

http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-570/pd

CPU
(Which one is better for full HD videos?)

• AMD Athlon™ II X2 245 (2.9GHz/1MB cache)
• AMD SempronTM 140 (2.7GHz/1MB cache)

Video card

• Integrated ATI HD4200 RadeonTM

[aedipuss]

just about any recent comp will do. we even have an ipad that plays HD vids fine over wireless N. a couple pentium dual core laptops also.

well maybe not a sempron.... the x2 should be fine.

[edDV]

Critical issue is get a display card that decodes HD MPeg2 (all) and HD h.264 (verify). Idea is to have the display card do the decode with zero CPU load. That allows you to spec a smaller CPU.

On ATI cards, the key spec to look for is "AVIVO HD"*. The HD4200 Radeon qualifies.
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/ati-radeon-hd-4200/...tications.aspx


* "PureVideo HD" for NVidia cards.

[neworldman]

Great thanks. So the AMD Athlon™ II X2 245 (2.9GHz/1MB cache) is the better CPU to get? It is a $30 upgrade

[jagabo]

Just about any dual core CPU can play 1080p24 and 1080p30 h.264 -- when using a multithreaded decoder and a decent video card. Unfortunately, last time I checked, VLC's h.264 decoder was single threaded.

I just updated to VLC 1.1.6 (win32). The h.264 decoder appears to be multithreaded now.