Onboard Intel 845 -How much is it holding me back (1 Viewer)

[wild9]

Just got a dell GX260 for use as a media pc, things seem a bit sluggish at the moment and im not sure what the cause is
CPU: P4 2.0
MEM: 512 meg PC2100
GFX: Onboard Intel 845

Im guessing the graphics card is holding me back, would an nvidia 5200 speed things up much? Im borrowing the pc from work so I dont want to spend too much on it.

Also if i drop a P4 2.8 chip in along with the above (or other cheap) card in should i expect to be able to play HD (720p)?

 

[Bram]

512MB extra and a faster graphixcard will solve your problems I think. But I wouldn't buy a FX5200. For +/- 60 euro you have a geForce 6200. Much faster for only +/- 20 Euro more. The FX serie is terrible.

 

[wild9]

Yeah im aware its a rubbish card. I need a cheap low profile AGP card, I guess i could run to a 6200, they have HD acceleration via purevideo iirc. Id rather hold off on the ram because when some turns up I can just borrow it from work. So im thinking for about £100 i could be able to get a 6200 and a P4 2.8 chip (maybe second hand) im hopeing this combo will let me run some ffdshow filtering on low def clips and allow me to run high def. That sound reasonable?

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

wild9

Could do with knowing what TV card your using, as if outputting mpeg2 file without using the cpu (ie DVB-T or Hardware encoded card) upgrading your processor will not have that great an effect.
Where as the graphics upgrade will HUGELY improve things.

 

[wild9]

Not interested in TV at this stage sorry for not saying. Im only interested in DVD images and downloaded video like animie and high def clips.

 

[Bram]

If you want to go cheaper than the 6200, buy a Ati 9250 instead of the 5200. They both cost 39.50 euro in the city where I live.

 

[Marcusb]

My HTPC is using 512MB at the moment. It was one GB but I had to borrow from it for another PC. Didn't really notice a difference in Media Portal.

 

[Bram]

With HDTV you will notice the difference.

 

[Marcusb]

Good point. HDTV hasn't really taken off very much in Australia, so I don't bother with it.