Media Player

[budwzr]

Yeah, better than nothing, but if a new media player has that, it's a red flag.

[drgt]

DXVA is Windows' interface for video decompression by the graphics chip (GPU). Look for laptops based on the latest GPUs. They will have better support for GPU decoding. They will do better on video compressed with the more intensive h.264 settings.

VLC won't work for HD h.264 video. It's h.264 decoder is single threaded and it takes modern CPUs more than one core to decode 1920x1080 h.264. It does support GPU decoding but it requires Win7 or Vista (not XP). And, as mentioned, the GPU will not play all possible h.264 settings so sometimes you need to fall back on the CPU.

The faster dual core CPUs are fast enough for 1080p24 h.264 decoding. If you are going to get a camcorder that shoots 1080p60 or 1080p50 you will need more.

Thanks. Any particular preference on GPU brand and memory size?
Happy new year!

[jagabo]

I don't keep real close track of this. But for video playback just about any current ATI/NVIDIA GPU will do - cards starting around US$60. In terms of integrated graphics I would start with ATI 880/885/890, NVIDIA GF9300???, and maybe the latest Intel Core i3 CPUs (graphics on the CPU). If you're looking to do some GPU based H.264 encoding, NVIDIA has a lot more support than ATI. I would start looking at NVIDIA 460 GTX 768 MB, starting around US$150 now.

[drgt]

We are talking about laptop GPU not separate cards for tower usage. I say this because I see you are quoting card prices.

So I should look for a laptop with NVidia 9xxx GPU?

[jagabo]

Like I said, I don't keep close track of this so I can't really make good recommendations. Just look at laptops with the latest AMD or NVIDIA integrated graphics.