Can a p4 pc be a (halfway) decent htpc?

Z

zer0nix

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 24, 2012
Messages
81
here's what i've got:

cpu: 2.53 p4 northwood .. 133 x 19 @ 1.459 (can't overclock with this mobo unless it's a software oc)
gpu: 64mb radeon 9500 pro at 4x (mobo limited)
mobo: 07e8h ( intel i845g chipset )
ram: 2x 512 ddr
soundcard: yamaha xg-ymf724f
os: xp sp3
players: xbmc-11.0-dsplayer, vlc
files: mostly 720p stuff

with this setup, i can actually play MOST 720p videos without stutter but a few videos give me problems.

the one video that suffers the most has the following specs:

Format H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Bitrate 2405 Kbps
Max Bitrate 12.5 Mbps
Resolution 1280 x 720
Framerate 23.976 fps
QF Ratio 0.129
Size 2.99 GB
Audio MPEG-4 AAC-LC Version 4
Channels 5.1 Surround ~ 404 Kbps
Sample Rate 48000Hz
Resolution 16 bits

strangely, the frameskipping coincides mostly with certain audio effects; wrenching, grinding, cracking, roaring, whirring and humming tend to lower the framerate down to 10fps! motion blur also causes severe framedropping.

i'm mainly looking for tweaks to enhance performance. i'm heard of users getting fairly good performance with pentium 4 cpus and even some cpus that are much weaker.


alternatively, i also have a spare xpm2500 cpu that is rock hard stable at 2.5ghz, but i'll need a socket a mobo for that :p
 
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You could try coreavc which is a proprietary h264 decoder. it's known for doing better on lower end systems that only have cpu decoding ability.
 
Yeah try CoreAVC, it's going to be borderline I think but it should be able to do 720p if nothing else is hitting on the CPU.
 
I had a Athlon XP 1800 which is slightly slower than the P4 you have. It played 720p just fine, except for complex scenes with lots of moving particles (snow, high bitrate, high motion). Tip: skip the inbuilt deblocking filter (you can do that with pretty much any decoder), it will drastically reduce CPU usage. 1080p was barely playable if you don't use the deblocking filter. If you want 1080p get a recent AGP videocard, I played 1080p with next to 0% CPU usage using DXVA on a Radeon HD 3850 AGP card and a Duron 900MHz.

EDIT: what's with these threads anyway, surely it's faster to just try to play the video than type a whole question about it on the forums.
 
I would tray and getting a 3000 series video card. I think thats the latest generation that was on AGP. That should improve your video playback.
 
qbanb8582 said:
I would tray and getting a 3000 series video card. I think thats the latest generation that was on AGP. That should improve your video playback.
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Not by much. All of the AGP cards have a broken H264 decoder and use the CPU instead. That's about as good as it's going to get, for the most part.

Any high bitrate, complex HD videos are going to stutter like crazy with that system.
 
Very inefficient and very slow for modern and HD stuff.


I would say no. You can probably get an ION box for 120 bucks, why even bother?
 
You have nursed your system well, but you may want to consider monitoring the for sale portion of the [H]ardforums for a replacement. An ION box will suit your needs with regards to playback but you may want to upgrade to at least a Core 2 Duo system for unlimited functionality.
 
Verge said:
Very inefficient and very slow for modern and HD stuff.


I would say no. You can probably get an ION box for 120 bucks, why even bother?
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I agree with this. Just bail on that old crap and get something small and cheap, they usually do really well.
 
An Athlon x2 at 2.6GHz has it's hands full when playing WMC TV and 1080p Mkv files. It's fine if you don't ask much more of the computer while it's playing back media. I'd imagine that a single core P4 would deliver a miserable HTPC experience. I stopped trying to improve that build and I'm ordering new components for it.
 
Might make more sense to use that box as a fileserver and then just get a Roku or Apple TV.
 
450 said:
Might make more sense to use that box as a fileserver and then just get a Roku or Apple TV.
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P4's are very inefficient. You could get an atom+ram and rig it in your p4's case and it would pay for itself in electricity costs in the first year.
 
Verge said:
P4's are very inefficient. You could get an atom+ram and rig it in your p4's case and it would pay for itself in electricity costs in the first year.
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Well, I wouldn't run the P4 all the time. Just when watching movies.
 
Drop that P4 like a bad habit. I like to reuse hardware just as much as the next guy but when it comes to 1080p high bit rate files, a single core anything from those days won't cut it.
 
tesfaye said:
An Athlon x2 at 2.6GHz has it's hands full when playing WMC TV and 1080p Mkv files. It's fine if you don't ask much more of the computer while it's playing back media. I'd imagine that a single core P4 would deliver a miserable HTPC experience. I stopped trying to improve that build and I'm ordering new components for it.
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I beg to differ. I've been using an Athlon X2 4200 (2.2ghz) for years and it played WMC TV just fine. It never hit 50% usage while doing so. The only time it ever hit 100% CPU was before Win7 Sp1 was released. There was a specific Playready DRM bug when using analog video input with certain TV tuners that was fixed with windows update. It also played 1080p MKV files just fine when I coupled it with an HD4350 video card. I wasn't sure about the bit-rate or any of the compression that was used, but the mkv files were over 20GB in size if that gives any indication. If you were pairing that CPU with an older chipset/video card that didn't accelerate those files, using a Ceton tuner that needs a relatively fast CPU (2.7ghz dual core per spec sheet), or had a software bug like I did, then I could see why you might have had problems.

Prior to that, I used a single core Athlon64 3000+ (2.0ghz) paired with an ATI 9600pro on Windows Vista. It couldn't play 1080p (especially Flash based video), but everything else it handled just fine. It did max out the CPU during most tasks.

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Back on topic.

A P4 is on the absolute lowest end CPU that I would use in a media center. Even then I would hope it was 3ghz + and had HT.
 
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