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Updating my outdated pc

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by jerecho, Jun 5, 2011.

  1. jerecho

    jerecho Regular member

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    Here's what I got going. I have a computer in my living room that I want to play .m2ts files on (HD)

    When I play some of these (with powerdvd 10) they come out choppy for lack of a better word. I've got a pretty decent video card but the cpu is old.

    My motherboard is an Asus p5b deluxe with wifi
    My CPU is an Intel Pentium d cpu 2.80 GHz
    I also have 2 gb of RAM installed

    I am currently running windows xp professional but also had windows 7 ultimate 64 bit and had the same issues.


    What would be a quick fix to getting this thing updated?

    New motherboard and cpu?
    Or can I just install some more RAM?
     
  2. aldan

    aldan Active member

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    ive got the same cpu and have no trouble with a choppy picture.what video card do you have?mine is an old invidia 7600 gtx so is pretty antique.one other thought,have you tried another player for these files?
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2011
  3. jerecho

    jerecho Regular member

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    I have a Radeon HD 4550 video card. I tried playing on windows media player but could not get sound to play.
     
  4. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    Last edited: Jun 5, 2011
  5. jerecho

    jerecho Regular member

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    I just reinstalled windows 7 32 bit. updated everything. vlc player is by far the worst at playback. Windows media player will play the video perfect but will not play any audio. I googled forever about why no audio and the fix seems to be changing the audio out to speakers rather than a digital. All I have is an optical out to my reciever so I screwed on that. I finally got powerdvd to play it smoothly by changing the windows theme to basic and checking a "use hardware acceleration" box in powerdvd. My computer keeps telling me over and over that I am running low on memory. I think tomorrow I will change out the 2gb of ram to 4gb and hopefully that should solve all my problems.

    I'll give the avs player a try too
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2011
  6. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    i'm running an intel dualcore 2.6ghz with 2gigs of ram with a geforce 7600gt(256megs of ram) in xp pro with no problems with movies. what is your screen resolution as i'm running at 1024x768?
     
  7. jerecho

    jerecho Regular member

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    My screen res is 1920x1080 out to my Sharp Aquos tv

    Are you watching HD (Blu-ray) video or just DVD? DVD's work fine on my system also.
    I listed on my original post what CPU I have but I don't know if it's a good or bad one.
     
  8. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    knock your resolution down to see what happens. check the 1st link in my 1st post to see what cpu you might want to upgrade to. i play dvd. is the bluray drive internal or external?
     
  9. jerecho

    jerecho Regular member

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    I don't play from a blu-ray drive. I rip the blu ray to a .m2ts file and play it from the hard drive. It seems to be working now it would just be nice to not have to switch to windows basic every 2 seconds because of running out of memory. Do you think the CPU I have is outdated?
     
  10. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    run taskmanager while play a problem movie to see what the performance is & what the ram status is at.
     
  11. jerecho

    jerecho Regular member

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    In task manager it looks like while a blu ray is playing the cpu usage is at 99% and the ram stays at about 900 mb. When I check the "use hardware acceleration" box in powerdvd the cpu usage drops to about 75% and the movie sees to play fine from there.

    When I switch to windows basic theme the cpu usage drops again to about 60% The ram doesn't seem to change no matter what's going on. Never gets above 900mb
     
  12. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    ram is good then so don't need anymore as can't use past 3.25-3.5 gigs of ram when using 32 bit windows. can upgrade cpu to dual core or above. is your hard drive ide or sata & what size & what is free?
     
  13. jerecho

    jerecho Regular member

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    The hard drive is a sata drive but it is in a usb docking station so I can easily move the hard drive to whatever computer I want to watch the movie on. If I wanted to upgrade the cpu what would you recommend? This computer never has anything too crazy going on at once. All it is for is watching movies, Netflix, and playing music

    The drive with the movies is a 1 tb drive with 500 gb free

    my os drive is an 80 gb with 70 gb free
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2011
  14. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    i wonder if that usb is causing the problem. can you take the drive out of the enclosure & install it internally in the pc to see if still have problem or not? don't get a celeron version cpu.
     
  15. jerecho

    jerecho Regular member

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    It doesn't matter if it is in usb or hooked up internally with sata cable. Same stuff. It seems though a new cpu is in my future. Maybe I'll just swap the motherboard while I'm at it because it has a broken sata port and a cpu fan error that I can't seem to get rid of that prevents it from booting without pressing F1 (very annoying)
     

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