Hardware XviD/DVD player: Best bang for buck, CPU or graphics card?

[JimmyBarnes]

Hi

I use a PC with Duron 1300 CPU and Geforce4 MX440 AGP 64 MB for playback of DVDs and XviD/DivX AVIs.

I have progressively upgraded to the above (starting with Duron 700 CPU and Riva TNT2 32 MB graphics) as I found certain AVIs would not play without stuttering/pausing - mainly ones with large resolutions (>640 x ...) and high bitrates (> 1500 kbps) using the lesser configuration.

I seem to be at that threshold again (stuttering pausing with certain his res/hi bitrate AVIs) and am wondering which upgrade gives the best bang for the buck: CPU or the graphics card?

Graphics card specifics would help (if that is the answer)

thanks

JB

[Doom9]

Press Alt-Ctrl-Delete, start the task manager and monitor your CPU usage.. if it maxes out when you get stutters, you know it's the CPU, and my best bet would be the CPU as wel. Unless you have DXVA (which in your case I know you don't, only very modern GFX cards have it), the CPU really does pretty much everything.

Although, if you're going to upgrade, you should consider switching sockets and bus as well.. Socket A and AGP is only going to be around for so long.

[Axed]

Im suprised your stuttering on that system. I use an athlon 1200 and can run almost any Mpeg-4 ASP video using ffdshow without pp of course. Make sure you dont have your system full of junk running in the background.

If your on a budget, like the rest of us down here, one of the cheapest upgrades you can go is on the Intel 478 socket using a motherboard with a SiS661 chipset and a cheap celeron. You can also reuse your old Videocard, especially if you want TV out. Like Doom9 said, theres no chance of upgrading this system later on, but if your just going for cheap, effective systems in the short term its a pretty good combo.

[tsp]

if you motherboard supports the mobile athlon xp 2500+ that would be a very good upgrade for the money (about 85$). Mainly because they overclock very easy to 2400 MHz and faster. I did that with my old MSI MS6380 v2.0 (K7T266 Pro2) motherboard although it needed a small modification first.

[jon.schaffer]

Axed mentioned FFDShow. If you do not use it, take the time to use it. It allowed me to watch numerous movies with "large" resolution (720x...) for a while with a PIII 700 MHz and a not-so-good video card. Properly configured, FFDShow could make you save money... worth the try.

[Cyberace]

MPlayer (www.mplayerhq.hu) is famous for smoth playback on slow PC's (GUI's are available and so is a Win32 version) ;)

[theReal]

Yep, wih FFDShow I can perfectly watch 640xXXX XVid on my dad's computer, an original Athlon 1000MHz with 100MHz FSB and a very old Matrox G200 graphics card with 16MB RAM. I have to lower the screen resolution to 800x600 or 640x480, though - but then it's working fine