MKV & HD with Integrated ??

Hi everyone,

First off, just want to say I have just found this forum and it's been so useful.

Well I'm hoping that someone can help me with a question, I'm looking to buy a Dell either a Inspiron 1525 or Dell XPS 1330, my options are getting a really high spec 1525 or a base spec XPS 1330.

But the one thing that I really need to know is whether I will be able to watch MKV and HD content on the Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100 graphics card, because if I can't, I can rule out the Inspiron 1525.

Any thoughts on this would be great, thanks!

 

1080p will play no problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_X3100

 

Thanks, are MKV's fine as well then, even if its fairly high quality?

 

my dad has a t5450 with a x3100 and it plays mkv's fine with the CCCP codecs. what cpu were you gonna get?

 

Well I think the slowest CPU option I would go for is the T5800, 2ghz Core Duo, but i'm not sure if this is outdated now?

 

the t5800 has enough muscle with decoding mkv's but i would consider t7xx.other than that then you are good to go my friend 1080p is amazing.

 

What codec are you going to using in the MKV container? MKV is NOT a video format in itself, its a container which could have h264/264, DivX or anything else, nearly any type of audio from MP3 to FLAC to AC3, and subtitles inside.

A well encoded x264 at 1080p can be very taxing, but I have never ran one on a X3100. I have run 720p X264s on an ATI X300 and Pentium M 1.6GHz, which just about managed it.

 

I don’t think X3100 has hardware acceleration for H.264 (correct me if I’m wrong). Therefore it depends entirely on the CPU. A core 2 duo should be able to handle 1080p HD content despite the codec. So you should be ok, even with a X3100. However, I recommend a 2GHz CPU to be on the safe side.

 

yes the x3100 has a shared bus. so all the work will go to the cpu, but even a 1.6ghz is able to run 1080p smoothly. But i do agree with you a 2ghz cpu will be your best bet because of "just in case" and your more futureproof.

I myself upgraded from a t5450 since i found it slow after a while.

 

Thanks everyone, it was a hard decision but I've gone for the XPS 1330 now, and I found a good deal at the DEll outlet, for a T8100 2.1ghz core 2 duo with the 8400m GS card, bit worried about the overheating issue, so may try the copper mod. Hopefully made the right choice. Thanks the advice guys.