playing hd on a laptop,wot type of gpu

[timestoby]

im lookn into getn a laptop,but will want it to play 720p and 1080p mkv x.264 files.and i would also want to hook up an external lcd tv or a monitor.
to sava abit of money i herd that the intel gma x3100 could do 1080p.wot a bout the ati x1300? if i gotta spend abit more then i was thinkn of going fo the nvidia 8600gt 256 that is an upgrade in the newer laptops.or i could stick with the 8400 gs 128mb that is included as standard.

the new dell laptops have these.

[Dark Shikari]

CoreAVC will let any new computer system play 1080p content without graphics-card acceleration such as PureVideo. Its 10 bucks, or you can find various copies of it around the internet.

In terms of graphics cards, I believe the 8600 has PureVideo HD acceleration but from what I've heard its somewhat finicky in what it chooses to accelerate.

[WoRkZ]

To answer your hardware question, go with the x1300 if you ONLY plan to play x264 encoded movies. The AVIVO acceleration is far superior to the PureVideo one.

But if you want a much broader support for HD files, go for an NVidia GPU. PureVideo accelerates almost any formats... but it is not as good as AVIVO at doing it.

In any case, get the best CPU possible because this is the most important part of the whole system (as far as HD is concerned).


My HTPC can play 1080p x264 very smoothly at 1920 x 1080 (30fps though) running an Athlon X2 64 4600+ and using the onboard x1250 with AVIVO. So you should be okay with the x1300 as long as you've got some muscle on the CPU side. This is under XP though... not that Vista crap.

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