AMD Sempron 3400+ and h264 HD Video

[EmuZombie]

I'm out of touch with modern processors so forgive me.

I have the opportunity to buy from a friend a computer with an AMD Sempron 3400+ and 2GB DDR2 667 RAM. The motherboard has an AGP slot (a downer, I know) but I have an ATI 2400HD which supports DXVA, hardware decoding of h264 files.

My question, do you guys think playback of 720p and 1080i h264 files would be smooth on this setup? (from the HD-PVR of course)

1080p isn't required, I don't own a 1080p TV and thus don't have much use for it at the moment. However, just for kicks what is your opinion about 1080p as well?

I'm thinking this will be a cheap way I can add an extender for SageTV. However, HD playback is a must.

[SWKerr]

The CPU by itself would not work but if you can get the video card to take the load of the h.264 decoding you might get it to work.

Post from the below post:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31207

The folks over at tomshardware managed to play Blu Ray movies with a 1.8GHz Sempron 3200+ using the 780G. When prices for Blu Ray drives fall (currently $130 at newegg), we'll be able to build a media extender w/Blu Ray for much less than a full priced standalone Blu Ray player ($399). Pretty cool.

I have a ATI 3450 video card in one client and the only codec I found that will use the card as opposed to the CPU for video decoding is the Cyberlink codec. I suspect you would be able to make it work with you card but if you could not get sage to use the hardware decoding you would be out of luck.

[eopian]

720p or 1080p yes. 1080i no. I have both the HD2600Pro AGP and an HD3650 AGP in different computers. I can play both 720p and 1080i clips from hdpvr test clips.

You can do it with that computer, just not that video card. I would suggest an ASUS 3650 AGP since they are fanless. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121260

Despite what everybody says, get the hotfix drivers directly from AMD/ATI's website (they are a bit tricky to find). http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...estionID=31625

[toricred]

Under normal circumstances I'd recommend looking at the HD Extender, but since they'll be out of stock until December and we don't know what the price will be for them since it will be a new design I'd suggest buying Cyberlink for the codecs and the 3650 suggested above. If you can wait until December and maybe spend more than $200 you might want to wait for the new extender.