Pentium 4 2.8 & 3.0 Northwood with Radeon HD 2600 or 2400 for HD?

J

JonDoms

Gawd
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Aug 22, 2005
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Does anyone think I can record and watch HD content with a P4 2.8 or 3.0 Northwood and a Radeon HD2600 or 2400 AGP card?

I'm sure it can play HD content @ 1920 x 1200 since the HD2600 and 2400 should offload the CPU. But just want to get your opinion.

Source is OTA HD content recorded with MCE05.
 
The offloading that the 24/2600 (85/8600) series does is for H264 and VC-1 (only ATI) content like Blue Ray/HD DVD. Broadcast HD is not one of these formats. Broadcasted HD is simply a high bite rate MPEG2 file (just like DVDs) wrap as a Transport Stream (TS) file.

You could pair that CPU up with a GF4 MX and it would work is what I'm saying (cause the GF4 MX does MPEG2 acceleration like every card after it).

Honestly, I think it would be worth more to go with a cheap s939 PCIe system instead. You can pick up a decent X2 for under $70 and a mobo for the same price as a 2600 AGP (which is the version you'll want; the 2400 is rather gimped) and then get a PCIe card for cheaper then you an AGP version.
 
Thanks Crim.
You always come up with insightful answers.

I have 4 Media centers running and I did notice on my Brother in law's machine that I built, that HD content ran on a P4 2.8 + FX5200 on a 720P Plasma nicely.
I was worried if I used a 1080p monitor the setup might choke and I would need a better card.
 
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