Ordered new HTPC, question regarding specs. and x.264 playback...

[KroZ]

I would like some qualified opinions on what to expect regarding quality and ease of playback of x.264 720p and 1080p .mkv files on a system w/ the following specifications:

CPU: (Socket AM2+) AMD Phenom(TM) X4 9500 Quad-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
MOTHERBOARD: (Socket AM2)GigaByte GA-M57SLI-S4 nForce 570-SLI Chipset DDR2/800 SATA RAID PCI-Express MBoard w/GbLAN,IEEE1394,USB2.0,&7.1Audio
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB 16X PCI Express
MEMORY: 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate
HDD: 500GB x 2 SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

[Baldrick]

It should work just fine. I use ffdshow,haali media splitter and mpc for 720p h264/x264 and coreavc for 1080p and it plays smooth on my old athlon 3800 core duo.

[redwudz]

I don't see any problems either. If that setup doesn't play them back properly, nothing will.

I didn't know the AMD Phenom was on the market. But I see it on a few sites now that I looked. Very interesting.

If it drops a hundred dollars in price, I would consider the upgrade. But probably only a matter of time.

[hulinning]

Your PC is too fast for this job already.

My PC is Dell GX280 2.8GHz 512 MB RAM Vista Ultimate. It can play all 1080p movies over the LAN without a problem. I got ATI Radeon HD2600XT for my video card, though.

See