When Watching Streaming Videos Online

[Solaris17]

Here is the place I read it at Newegg just scroll down to AMD Eyespeed Technology. It states "With AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology and third-generation UVD (Unified Video Decoder) dedicated video playback accelerator, enjoy beautifully rich and clear video playback when streaming from the web. Take in your favorite movies in stunning, stutter-free HD quality and run multiple applications smoothly at maximum speed. Enjoy lightning fast game play and realistic physics effects with enhanced Video Quality features such as advanced post-processing and scaling, dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction, and independent video gamma control."

thats within reason. even if it were possible a GTX580 wouldnt cure the fact that my PC is slow as balls running a pentium 3 933mhz.

 

[m4gicfour]

Apart from Solaris being a little curt with his response, he isn't wrong. They market it like it will cure cancer, and they do what they do very well, but it isn't magic.

The GPU can only process certain kinds of tasks. For the kinds they work for (most video these days is supported) the graphics card will take almost all of the proccessing load off the CPU, but there's always some overhead that the cpu needs to take care of.

Then there's the fact that the CPU has to run windows, and communicate with the server, and do all kinds of other things to even GET the video to you, and if it's not up to the task, you'll lag even though the GPU is more than capable of playing the video stutter free. The CPU, RAM, and motherboard can all bottleneck the GPU to varying degrees.

 

[happy]

thats within reason. even if it were possible a GTX580 wouldnt cure the fact that my PC is slow as balls running a pentium 3 933mhz.

LOL Pentium 3.

 

[happy]

So will the diamond 7000 be enough play 720p or 25GB or 10GB Rips or streaming fine with the Dell Dimensions E310 being that it is faster than the GX270? I think I forgot to mention that I have 2Gb memory installed in the E310.

 

[m4gicfour]

Only if the CPU is powerful enough to do it on it's own. Remember the E310 has no AGP so you would have to get either a PCI card or a PCIe (x1) card. (or get crazy and cut the slot so a x16 card fits )

EDIT - this would likely be enough card to play HD streams and it's x1. Not overly cheap, though. I've never owned a 5450 so I can't guarantee its performance

Notice it's a low profile card though so you might need to get a regular profile bracket for it, and you'd need a bigger Power Supply to be safe.

 

[happy]

Only if the CPU is powerful enough to do it on it's own. Remember the E310 has no AGP so you would have to get either a PCI card or a PCIe (x1) card. (or get crazy and cut the slot so a x16 card fits )

Alrighty then. Thanks.
But I am assuing if I do cut the PCIe card to fit into x1 it will be faster than the PCI card right? Performance wise after I cut the PCIe card will have negative effects right?

THANKS FOR THE HELP

 

[Solaris17]

i honestly think this is a hard question. Here are my points of concern for what its worth.


310:
CPU: probably more powerful, it will probably support a better upgrade path.
RAM: It supports better.
HDD: its sata
Graphics: it supports x1

270:
CPU: its slower probably doesnt have much of an upgrade path. but it is a northwood.
RAM: slower but it can still do probably 400mhz
HDD: its IDE
Graphics: AGP this isnt as good but you probably have more upgrade paths.

My issues are as follows. The CPU if you can find a fast one are cheap either way.
The ram isnt really as big of a deal. but a set maybe 2GB 2x 1GB to be on the safe side. this will bring the performance up and cut lag.
HDD lets face it IDE doesnt matter THAT much. get a nice 320gig or something up the pagefile disable indexing and enable write buffer.

Graphics. this is probably my biggest problem you can get a 3650 AGP decent card it will fit. or you can get a PCIE card and cut it. but do you think you can cut it? you need to be PRECISE you need to count the pins and make sure you cut the EXACT amount out. this is time consuming and you need to be CAREFUL. if you can do it go for it. but imo personally i would go with the 270 its older but it seems like it would be less work to get it to do what you need it to.

 

[m4gicfour]

Don't cut the card, cut the slot. Yes it will bottleneck the card, but will still be faster than a PCI card. (in other words, don't put a top-end card in there. It'll bottleneck the crap out of it better value to use a mid-range card. 56xx or 57xx rather than 58xx or 59xx on ATi side)

just as a note: from one of the reviews of that 5450 i posted:

I used/tested this HIS ATI Radeon HD5450 in three different Dell PC's that I had upgraded to Windows 7. Windows 7 no longer supported the onboard Intel Chipsets that were on the Dell Dimension 4700 and 3100/E310 models. The Windows 7 benchmarks rated this video card between 4.8 to 5.2 depending on my system's hardware and operating system configurations. My two Dimension 3100/E310 PC's run ESRI ArcGIS and I use the other for video/multimedia playback respectively. Works pretty well and plays 720p video very well. Higher resolutions have issues on these model PC's.

 

[c_heater]

another trick for a low end machine is to use a down loader like speedbit or ant and put it on your hard drive. it doesnt work for all sites, but ive found very few that ant wont grab.

 

[happy]

Don't cut the card, cut the slot. Yes it will bottleneck the card, but will still be faster than a PCI card. (in other words, don't put a top-end card in there. It'll bottleneck the crap out of it better value to use a mid-range card. 56xx or 57xx rather than 58xx or 59xx on ATi side)

just as a note: from one of the reviews of that 5450 i posted:

When you say cut the slot you mean something like this right? --:> Slot. So just cut the Pcie GPU until it will fit into the X1 slot right.

 

[Solaris17]

When you say cut the slot you mean something like this right? --:> Slot. So just cut the Pcie GPU until it will fit into the X1 slot right.

no he means cut the back off the slot. i should have thought of that iv done it before.

EDIT::

before

After

 

[happy]

no he means cut the back off the slot. i should have thought of that iv done it before.

Oh, man that seems quite hard cutting it off from the motherboard. I think I know what you're describing. You mean the two back ends of the slot that fits the card snuggly in. I don't think I could cut that with a scissor perfectly. But I just found some x1 cards. They would do the job right? Newegg

Edit: Thanks for the picture. Figured it out after I looked closer.

 

[Solaris17]

Oh, man that seems quite hard cutting it off from the motherboard. I think I know what you're describing. You mean the two back ends of the slot that fits the card snuggly in. I don't think I could cut that with a scissor perfectly. But I just found some x1 cards. They would do the job right? Newegg

please dont cut cards or components with scissors.

yes get one of the fermis the 218 or 510 or w/e would work the best honestly you could also probably go 8 series. but if you looking at h.264 and other hidef codecs they would probably work better.

 

[m4gicfour]

Oh, man that seems quite hard cutting it off from the motherboard. I think I know what you're describing. You mean the two back ends of the slot that fits the card snuggly in. I don't think I could cut that with a scissor perfectly. But I just found some x1 cards. They would do the job right? Newegg

Oh look, there's that 5450 again

Yeah those will work. I can't make any comments on the performance of the nVidia based cards since I mainly keep up with ATi/AMD in the last few years, but read the reviews.

 

[happy]

Final Question
I purposely installed winxp on the dimensions e310 because I didn't know if this machine would be able to run Win 7 fast enough with 2GB. I know that 1GB would be enough for Win 7, but for old machines should I have installed Win 7 32bit instead or just keep winxp as is?

 

[Solaris17]

Oh look, there's that 5450 again

Yeah those will work. I can't make any comments on the performance of the nVidia based cards since I mainly keep up with ATi/AMD in the last few years, but read the reviews.

yes or this since its cheaper. Although I cant speak for ATI m4g knows his stuff. We simply have diffirent ends of expertise in this field

Final Question
I purposely installed winxp on the dimensions e310 because I didn't know if this machine would be able to run Win 7 fast enough with 2GB. I know that 1GB would be enough for Win 7, but for old machines should I have installed Win 7 32bit instead or just keep winxp as is?

honestly given the specs i dont think one would affect performance one way or another. HD video is going to run like HD video on that hardware. If you want 7 on it go for it. if you dont want to bother getting rid of XP dont.

 

[m4gicfour]

Win 7 runs much better than Vista on low end hardware. It runs pretty decent on stuff like you've got, but I can't say whether XP or 7 would be better for you. 7 will have better support for newer features (like GPU-assisted video decoding) and software but XP might run a little faster.

 

[happy]

I was actually going to give the E310 away rather than the Gx270 because I overlooked the x1 slot on the E310. But luckily you guys mentioned the x1 slot. I feel more satisfied giving away the Gx270. I believe the x1 cards are better than the agp cards right?

Really appreciate the help. This will save me a couple of bills from building a new rig and and for my friend.

Thanks Solaris17 and m4gicfour

 

[m4gicfour]

x1 would be pretty close to the same as AGP as far as bandwidth goes I think. The PCIe will give you the ability to cut the slot and use a newer card that AGP wouldn't support, or to buy an x1 card that is more powerful than cards which used AGP

THIS is the better of the two nVidia cards that were on that page for $60, but I can't say how it will compare to other cards, only that it's better than the other $60 Zotac on there.

 

[Solaris17]

I was actually going to give the E310 away rather than the Gx270 because I overlooked the x1 slot on the E310. But luckily you guys mentioned the x1 slot. I feel more satisfied giving away the Gx270. I believe the x1 cards are better than the agp cards right?

thats a whole diffirent argument and way out of the scope of this thread. like anything else. the high end hardware of last gen can outperform the low end stuff of the next gen. this is the same for cards. some AGP cards can outrun PCIE ones. That question requires too many specific answers. you cant really answer it without giving you a list of which is better then what. So im just going to stick with the above.

 

[m4gicfour]

thats a whole diffirent argument and way out of the scope of this thread. like anything else. the high end hardware of last gen can outperform the low end stuff of the next gen. this is the same for cards. some AGP cards can outrun PCIE ones. That question requires too many specific answers. you cant really answer it without giving you a list of which is better then what. So im just going to stick with the above.

Lol and that. But remember that the last gen that used AGP whatsoever was ATi's 46xx and lower cards, so the last "high-end" AGP card would be a 3850. Is a 5450 faster than a 3850? Yes for some things, no for others. 3850 would likely be faster for gaming, but 5450 has the edge in driver support (late-model AGP cards require hotfix drivers), connectivity, UVD and power consumption (which is a major issue on a dell 200W power supply)

 

[Solaris17]

Lol and that. But remember that the last gen that used AGP whatsoever was ATi's 46xx and lower cards, so the last "high-end" AGP card would be a 3850. Is a 5450 faster than a 3850? Yes for some things, no for others.

thats what im saying though for example i can tell from experience running a nvidia 8400 pcie x16 that the AGP last gen ATI cards will destroy it. so for example getting that instead of the AGP system you would be shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[m4gicfour]

thats what im saying though for example i can tell from experience running a nvidia 8400 pcie x16 that the AGP last gen ATI cards will destroy it. so for example getting that instead of the AGP system you would be shooting yourself in the foot.

Why anyone made an 8400 in x16 is beyond me. Yeah, guys, I like this here radeon 3450... it has x16. Must be way faster than that 5850 that guy cut down to fit an x1 slot huDUUUURRRRR

 

[Solaris17]

so basically happy me and m4gicfour are saying if your going with the 310 blow the $$ and get the high end PCIE x1 cards from either nvidia or ATI depending on proce or preference. its not within your best interest getting a mid range or lowend one seeing as your already cutting performance with x1 and running old hardware.

go big or go home right?

 

[m4gicfour]

so basically happy me and m4gicfour are saying if your going with the 310 blow the $$ and get the high end PCIE x1 cards from either nvidia or ATI depending on proce or preference. its not within your best interest getting a mid range or lowend one seeing as your already cutting performance with x1 and running old hardware.

go big or go home right?

Did you just say high-end PCIe x1 card? Do they make those?