Please suggest a graphic card for old decaying pentium 4 pc?

Question

hi, i have an old (2004 build) pentium 4 2.4GHz pc, now i want to use it to stream videos to my HDTV, please suggest a graphic card. Im not sure what motherboard it have. Does old pentium would be able to stream HD videos? It have 128+512 mb RAM, should i upgrade too? I will use ubuntu.e too? I will use ubuntu.

Answer 1

If you have pce-8 or 16, an nvidia 210 will be suffecient to playback such videos. (Use mplayer with vdpau acceleration, not VLC)



for aGP, the radeon 4000 HD series should accelerate H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1, as well as MPEG2 video when using the catalyst driver in linux (through vaapi) (which should to 1080p)



http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600007850%20600007317&IsNodeId=1&name=Radeon%20HD%204000%20series

Answer 2

P4 is very old now. Its better if you upgrade. For up-gradation go with:

AMD AthlonII X3-440 @ 3k

Asus M4A78LT-M LE @ 2.5k

Corsair 2GB DDR3 RAM @ 0.7k

Total @ 6.2k

Definitely it will perform better than the P4 by a great margin and will also allow you to stream HD videos.



But still if you don't wanna upgrade now, then get a HD 5450 1GB @ 2.3k. I think this card will be enough for ur P4 to stream HD videos.





(1k=Rs.1000)

Answer 3

The problem you're going to have is that most newer graphics cards (even low-end ones) will not run efficiently with an older CPU like the P4. That CPU just will not be able to process the input from the card fast enough- so you get what is called a "bottleneck" which essentially means your system runs like crap, and slows way down.



I hate to tell you this, but its time to get a new computer.

Answer 4

Nothing. HD video is always going to be pretty CPU dependent, especially on an AGP PC where video cards that offer HD decoding are going to be very limited. You could probably get 720p out of it, but 1080p really isn't an option.

Answer 5

To play HD videos you need a dual core processor. Buying graphics card for streaming HD videos wont work plus it will be a waste of money.