Would getting a new videocard improve playback of hd movies? At the moment I have a pentium D 2.8 ghz, 2 gb ram, and an x1600 256 mb. The movie playback is jerky but viewable. The sound is slightly out of sync. Would upgrading my videocard give me much smoother playback? Specifically from x1600xt 256 to 1950pro 512... If not is there any videocard I can get that can dramaticly help my hd playback?
If you have AGP and you are not going to play PC games, then you can purchase a HD2600XT/PRO. If you have PCI then any cheap DX10 card will do the job HD2600, 8500GT, 8600GT/GTS. These will most likely improve video playback. Another thing could be your CPU is not fast enough to decode HD video (which it should be). Or it's just the software that you are using (try another piece of software) or that your computer is running slowly because you have too many processes running at a time. If you have a windows CD then you can try doing a fresh install of windows and then check video playback and if it still sucks then it's definitely your hardware.
I've managed to get it running nearly flawless by closing down procceses. I can use an extra 5-10% in performance to get it super flawless haha.
