Do I need a new Desktop/Laptop or can I upgrade?

Norman-B

anewhope wrote: »

The best and easiest way to answer that is for you to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft.

Thanks.

I would be lost without this site!

ps, I ran Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and it didn't look very healthy!

[Deleted User]

Norman-B wrote: »

Thanks.

I would be lost without this site!

ps, I ran Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and it didn't look very healthy!

You can ignore whatever it says for the currently installed hardware and devices, it's just the programs and software you're interested in.

Donnie

Norman-B wrote: »

Donnie, is it a case of one card out and new one in? Is that something I could do (no wiring etc)?

No, you have no card in at all. You have an AGP 8x slot, so either of the cards in my earlier posts will suffice.

Yes, you can complete the task very easily. No wiring needed. It just slots in once you have undone a couple of screws on the tower casing.

Try it. The worst that can happen is that you will breathe new life into an old PC.

pendulum

To get good results playing HD, your computer requires a decent processor and decent video card, and to be honest your system has neither. My old system was a Pentium 4 3Ghz with 2Gb RAM and a dedicated graphics card (Ti4200) and even that struggled at times with full HD playback. I think your system is not worth upgrading as you'd really need to upgrade too many things.

Remember that you do not have to buy a "new computer". As quad cores are the new thing now, there are loads of second hand dual core systems on eBay, and they are selling for cheap! I've seen half decent used dual core systems sell for less than £100 that would meet your HD playback needs just fine! £150+ buys you a really nice used system

Norman-B

Thanks for all the advice/replies.

Would someone please advise me on this on Ebay, 280436273069

spakkker

I have e5200 cpu myself but it's now discontinued.
The pc has no operating system - may be able to load yours.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/E5300-DUAL-CORE-320GB-2GB-9500GT-1GB-GFX-ERO-PC_W0QQitemZ250506201569QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_DesktopPCs?hash=item3a535549e1 - is £10 less and has next cpu up, no os.

Donnie

pendulum wrote: »

To get good results playing HD, your computer requires a decent processor and decent video card, and to be honest your system has neither. My old system was a Pentium 4 3Ghz with 2Gb RAM and a dedicated graphics card (Ti4200) and even that struggled at times with full HD playback. I think your system is not worth upgrading as you'd really need to upgrade too many things.

Remember that you do not have to buy a "new computer". As quad cores are the new thing now, there are loads of second hand dual core systems on eBay, and they are selling for cheap! I've seen half decent used dual core systems sell for less than £100 that would meet your HD playback needs just fine! £150+ buys you a really nice used system

I don't agree with you. My PC has a Celeron Processor, and runs Vista Premium on 1.5GB RAM. Put a £25 graphics card in and have no problems viewing HD content in excess of the Panasonic spec.

Remember, this is only 1280 x 720-pixels, not the Full HD specification.

I'm reasonably confident that will a little tweaking of the current system, such as clearing space on the HDD and the adding of the graphics card, it should be able to play the AVCHD Lite video.

BillScarab

It's not the just fact it's HD footage though Donnie. AVCHD is renowned for requiring a powerful machien just to play it back.

This is from Wikipedia

"Just as editing HDV video once demanded an expensive high-end PC, the system requirements for AVCHD editing software currently limits it to powerful machines. Compared to HDV, AVCHD video compression requires 2-4x the processing power, placing a greater burden on the computer CPU and memory. Older computers, even those that are capable of handling HDV, are often unacceptably slow for editing AVCHD, and can even struggle with smooth playback of AVCHD recordings."


So if AVCHD needs 2-4x the processing power comapre to HDV, the format used by DV tapes, it's no wonder older machines are struggling.

The OP's machine may be able to play it, especially as it's AVCHD Lite which presumably is a bit lighter on resources but there's no guarantee.

EDIT: Just found this on a Panasonic camcorder forum

"Hi guys, the minimum spec to play AVCHD smoothly is:

Core 2 Duo @2.2ghz or higher (so an E6400 or E6420 minimum)
NV7600 or ATI x1600 video
1gb memory"

He found that by changing the clock speed until it started stuttering and the that was the minimum that would play it smoothly. Again it's AVCHD not AVCHD Lite though.

http://www.pana3ccduser.com/showthread.php?t=16609

Donnie

BillScarab wrote: »

It's not the just fact it's HD footage though Donnie. AVCHD is renowned for requiring a powerful machien just to play it back.

This is from Wikipedia

"Just as editing HDV video once demanded an expensive high-end PC, the system requirements for AVCHD editing software currently limits it to powerful machines. Compared to HDV, AVCHD video compression requires 2-4x the processing power, placing a greater burden on the computer CPU and memory. Older computers, even those that are capable of handling HDV, are often unacceptably slow for editing AVCHD, and can even struggle with smooth playback of AVCHD recordings."


So if AVCHD needs 2-4x the processing power comapre to HDV, the format used by DV tapes, it's no wonder older machines are struggling.

The OP's machien may be able to play it, especially as it's AVCHD Lite which presumably is a bit lighter on resources but there's no guarantee.

First of all, your link does have to do with editing and does refer to the full spec of AVCHD.

Playback of AVCHD Lite is a different matter.

The updated machine, together with the Core AVC Codec may well do the trick. All for around £40. Possibly less.

Either way a cleaned up and updated PC can still be put to good use.
.

jbreckmckye

Couldn't you just convert the AVCHD video into something less demanding, like WMV?