Power Needed for Playback

[chucktx]

I've read what people have to encode H.264 files but my question what is needed to play them back? I have a 2.4 GHz P4HT w/ 1.5 GB RAM to encode the files. I have been until now happily using an old P3 800 w/ 512MB RAM as the computer for file playback to the HT. Am I going to need to upgrade this or can I get away with simply cretaing larger (less complex) H.264 files that will be able to play on this machine. I would like to keep using the machine for this purpose and this may cause me to wait to start dopting H.264 for my personal backups. Any info is appreciated.

[IRMA1024]

i had x264 movie encoded with 640x352 res, 2b-frame, 4ref-frame, CABAC, deblock 0:0, --analyse-all, 8x8, umh, me-range 16 , MP3 audio codec 128kbps, mkv container

played on Pentium III 450 Mhz, 256 MB sys mem. 4 MB onboard SiS VGA , and i got smooth playback on 100% view but a little droped frame on fullscreen, using Media Player Classic and ffdshow decoder.

[zhangtrinity]

My old IBM t23 with a P3 1.13GHz & 768 MB RAM just can not handle the MP4 file playback, no matter how hard I push it. So here I suggest you to grab a P4 pc or a 1.65GHz PowerBook, both can play H.264 Movies at 50% CPU usage. Cheers.

[movax]

I think it's generally agreed that anything below a P3 (which is borderline) will be insufficient for H264, and that a Willamette P4 or above is recommended IIRC.

[acidsex]

Anyone have any idea what the minimum is for H.264 AVC with HDTV resolutions? My P4 2.4Ghz chokes on 1080i big time and is hit and miss with 720p.

[nm]

I think it's generally agreed that anything below a P3 (which is borderline) will be insufficient for H264, and that a Willamette P4 or above is recommended IIRC.
Perhaps for full DVD resolutions and up. For 640x360 at 30 fps and below, a 600 MHz P3 is just fine. Also see bond's decoder comparison (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=99402), where AFAIK a P3 866MHz was used to measure the fps values. Of course, the results don't include delays that actual video playback on the graphics card may cause, but with a good card that should not be a big problem. For maximum performance you could also try mplayer.

In any case, it's best to just try it out yourself with a couple of test encodes. With the GUI tools and binary builds it really isn't too hard.