Worth Upgrading?

I have an Acer Travelmate 8200 (from 2006, Core Duo 2Ghz, ATI X1600, 2GB PC5300 RAM, 120GB 5400rpm drive) that is running low on hard drive space.

This computer still works perfectly, but it has been showing some weakness lately - not being able to play 1080p video is a big one. The hard drive has about 20GB remaining.


Do you think it's worth upgrading the drive in it? I already have an external drive, but my programs are taking up a lot of space on the internal drive. I am thinking of a Seagate 7200RPM 320GB drive (on sale for $55 shipped at newegg).


Opinions? I know it's only $55, but if things are going to change quickly here technology wise, I don't want to mess around.

 

its worth it, its $60 man. its not going to do anything about playing 1080p videos though.

 

Yeah I know. I'm really bummed about the 1080p haha... It runs 720p perfectly, but lags majorly at 1080p.

I guess I'll order it now

 

My R60, which is of the same era as your machine, has no trouble playing 1080p. My chip may be a bit faster, but you've got the X1600, which should help with the decoding depending on the software. My X1400 won't do this.

 

I tried a lot of stuff to get it to work. I use MPC-HC and tried many different codecs and rendering options. I only get about 18fps out of it. I think the trick has something to do with GPU acceleration, but I couldn't get it to work What are you using, and what is your CPU load during video playback?



Another question for you guys on a similar topic:

My friend has a Macbook Pro from a few years ago. It has a Fujitsu 120GB, 5400RPM, SATA 1.5Gb/s hard drive. Can he put any other drive in there (eg. the drive I listed above?) or does it need to be Mac specific? Also, if his MB only supports 1.5Gb/s, could he still use an SATA 3.0Gb/s drive without compatibility issues?

Thanks!

 

I think the X1600 is just at the beginning of UVD days, so it's not accelerating a whole lot.

Remember, 1080p is just a resolution... there are a ton of different compression options for the same resolution video. You could have a DivX 1080p video, and it would be on-disk larger than an H.264 video, but it would play back much better on your machine. Your issue is likely H.264, and there's not really a solution for that other than likely a new machine.

 

I see. These are mostly x.264 encoded video with the Matroska file type.


I ordered the new drive! $55 shipped, and a usb enclosure for my old drive as a backup.