ULV & HD movies

hey everyone

i have a pretty straightforward yes/no question
will a centrino core 2 solo @1.4GHz (SU3500) assisted by a GMA 4500MHD card be able to at least play 720p movies? (i dare not ask about 1080p). i mean the x264 compressed ones, not straight from a BD/HDDVD.

thanks in advance

 

hey,

you should fill in the faq (or post the specs and price of the notebook)

but, the answer to your question is yes, should be fine, just be sure to top up the RAM.

 

I didn't think to fill in the FAQ, since my question is very specific. I'm not asking what laptop to buy, but if a certain laptop can do something I want.

Anyway, full specs are as follows:
Centrino Core 2 Solo SU3500 @1.4GHz, 3MB cache, 800 FSB
4GB DDR3 1066MHz
320GB HDD (not specified, but prolly 5400rpm)
Intel GS45 Express chipset
GMA 4500MHD inegrated GPU w/ shared memory of course
13.3" 1366x768 LED backlit display
LAN, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, webcam and all the lot
oh and comes with Vista Home Premium
price is a little over 600 euros.

The issue worries me somewhat, since on the desktop i have an Opteron 140 CPU overclocked to 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM and 8600GT graphics and CPU load goes up to ~70% when watching 720p video and doesn't handle 1080p at all (plays, but skips frames all the time).
Given the above, 1.4GHz seems really shabby, so i'm wondering if the different/new instruction sets can compensate for the lack of raw power.

 

I take this is the Acer Timeline 3810T?

Review of the 4810T shows it handling a 720p movie fine.

 

People are saying Atom with GMA950 can play 720p with CoreAVC.

Assuming that is true (I never varified it) , SU3500 + X4500 should be able to play 1080p fine.

 

@Phil: Wow that's weird... Is my poor Opteron that far outdated?
If what you say about the Atom is true, then yes, I prolly shouldn't worry.

@adamj023: yes, it's the Acer Timeline 3810T

Thank you both for the answers.

 

It will play. I have a Pentium M Dothan 2.13 single core with 2gb DDR2 and Integrated GMA900 that will play 720p at WXGA res.

 

Intel Atom + GMA 950 can play 720P and 1080P with CoreAVC.

With the introduction of Windows 7 with its built in codec in Windows Media Player, CoreAVC is not needed because the built in codec is better than CoreAVC. I can now play 720P and 1080P on my netbook with underclocked processor.

SU3500 and X4500 should easily handle downloaded HD-videos. You might be able to get it working to decode 25mbps BlueRay video as well.

 

I can play 720p with the Atom and 2gb of ram in XP, 720p does not play perfect in Vista so its right on the border.

1080p forget it with the atom.

But that means your cpu is more than enough for 720p.

Im not too familar with CoreAVC, I just use FFDShow for max options and compatibility. You can find on many AV sites that CoreAVC is faster but not as high quality, it kills off some quality for the sake of speed, and that of course just make sense. Its hard to just come up with a "magic" decoder that is 3x faster than another with no sacrifices.

Though the loss is quality is small and if you were on a small 10" EEE like I am it probably wont matter

There are other codecs possibly even better for you, the ones that use your GPU to handle some of the work load taking it off the cpu.

 

I guarantee you that it can even play 1080p without any problem. gma4500 has a of built-in HD decoder which will offload most of the processing from the CPU. Moreover the "Core 2" processors have more than enough power for such simple tasks.

My old laptop (Pentium M + Ati X600) was running 1080P videos smoothly... Yours is way better...

--

 

FFDshow is about twice as slow on my netbook compared to CoreAVC. With FFDshow 720P videos will lag and gets a maximum of 10FPS. With CoreAVC or Windows7's own codec, I can get over 24FPS easily.

The quality drop isn't noticible on the netbook's screen, but I can tell a bit of difference on my HDTV.

If you have Windows 7, the integrated codec should offload work to supported GPU automatically.

If you don't want to upgrade to Windows 7, codecs from powerdvd..etc should offload work to GPU as well. I don't think FFDShow or CoreCodec support GPU acceleration.

 

Playing 720p shouldn't be any problem on your opteron, going by these benchmarks:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
CoreAVC+MPC will be necessary though.