Processor/Chipset Vs Video Card

[sdedalus83]

Yes, my typing fingers hit the 4 out of habit - indeed those are Ms.

So you say that even a monster like that 3.3GHz HT thing is a worthless hunk of junk.  Any ideas on why it has that stutter to it?

Mmmm... bananas!

A-N

Long execution pipeline, shitty memory interface, high latency.  Intel's drive to push clock speed led to a processor which wasted execution cycles like a Lamborghini wastes gas.

If you closed off every other process, you should be able to play most 720p encodes properly but even softsubs would probably screw it all to hell.

[TorturdChaos]

Well one thing about the P4 is they are the same socket (LGA 775) as the Core 2 Duo's - so if one had the money you could put a C2D on that mobo.

[kureshii]

Well one thing about the P4 is they are the same socket (LGA 775) as the Core 2 Duo's - so if one had the money you could put a C2D on that mobo.

Considering the frequency and FSB of that P4, it is most likely a Socket 478 one. Dead upgrade path.

[sdedalus83]

Well one thing about the P4 is they are the same socket (LGA 775) as the Core 2 Duo's - so if one had the money you could put a C2D on that mobo.

Considering the frequency and FSB of that P4, it is most likely an LGA478 one. Dead upgrade path.

No LGA 775 board ever had an AGP slot.  It's not even a most likely.

[arknorth]

Well one thing about the P4 is they are the same socket (LGA 775) as the Core 2 Duo's - so if one had the money you could put a C2D on that mobo.

Considering the frequency and FSB of that P4, it is most likely an LGA478 one. Dead upgrade path.

No LGA 775 board ever had an AGP slot.  It's not even a most likely.

Not even close guys - it's an old 478 socket.  Putt putt putt...


Image C/O ASRock

Oh and a 'my bad' - it's actually a 3.2GHz P4HT... like that -.1 is really going to matter...

A-N

[kureshii]

My family desktop used to be a P4 3GHz (it’s now an LGA775 Pentium dual-core), also Socket 478. It could at least handle high-bitrate 720p without GPU-accelerated decoding, so you can probably expect as much.

Going back to page 1 and actually answering the question, I don't think anything on Socket 478 is going to be able to manage high-bitrate 1080p (without overclocking, which is an area I don’t go into so I don’t know how much you can eke from it). I second (third? Fourth?) opinions that point to an Athlon II X2. Get a cheap AMD motherboard—if you go low-end integrated graphics, they can be amazingly cheap, and DDR3 memory as you please (memory prices are supposed to fall soon).

For about $120 (keeping your PSU, hard disk and other parts which I assume are or will be compatible—possibly not though, especially the PSU), that’s a 1080p-capable upgrade. Not cheap compared to what you can find from old parts stores, but that’s the minimum I think you’ll need if you’re aiming for 1080p playback.

Of course, there’s always the promise of GPU-accelerated decoding, and you can most likely still find one or two newer AGP graphics cards supporting that. But this isn’t really a solution, since there are many videos that don’t work quite well even with DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration).