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Tiny Khloe: 2026 Exxxotica Interview| Author | Post |
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| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 |  Posted - May 18 2008 : 11:20PMOK. First of all, my computer has integrated graphics. Which seems to be fine for almost everything I do. Except for videos. When I play videos (and sometimes DVDs), I often get stuttering playback. Especially if I use any sharpening, blurring, deinterlacing or color modifications. This seems to be the case no matter what video player I use. But most of the video players I use have a lot of complex settings that I don't understand buried deep within the menus. I try not to alter anything that I don't understand because experience tells me that it can be hard to remember what I changed if something goes funky. So anyway. I'm wondering how much the video card has to do with this? I've read that you only need a good video card if you play games. Can I expect better performance for my videos and DVDs if I get a fairly basic add on card? As far as I know, everything else about my computer should be fine for videos. P4, 2 gigs of RAM, etc. I've done Google searches but couldn't seem to find anything conclusive. [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 18 2008 : 11:24PM [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - May 18 2008 : 11:50PM [Link] |
Bob  All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 18 2008 : 11:58PM Then, go into Control Panel and find out (1) what the precise core type, FSB frequency, and clock speed are for your P4 processor; and (2) what the chipset is for your on-board graphics solution. Armed with that kind of information, you can get help at any number of computer-tech message boards. TomsHardware.com has an excellent message board. The maker of your computer (if you bought it assembled) probably has a message board, or their tech support people can steer you to one. Tech support may have some answers for you, too -- but beware of any offer to purchase up-grades directly from them, as it will likely cost you more that way. ----------------------- [typos] Edited by - bob on 5/19/2008 3:12:12 AM [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 12:02AM Oh I think Bob's advice is sound but before you start digging have you updated your video drivers lately? Maybe it's time to figure what on board chip set you have and grab some fresh drivers. And thank you for telling me about Syberia by the way, I have been doing nothing but playing adventure games this week so if you want any recommendations let me know. Do you have KOTOR for the XBOX? Edited by - conquistador on 5/19/2008 12:03:52 AM [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 12:15PM I've also updated my video driver at least once since I got the machine (The stuttering video problem happens with both driver versions, BTW). That update showed up on my Windows update scan one day not long after I got the computer. Other than that, when I check the Emachines web site for drivers for my system, they appear only to have the original drivers. So. I checked to see what the chipset was and looked for the driver download from Intel I found it and downloaded it but unfortunately, when I ran the exe file, it told me the driver "wasn't validated for this system" and that "setup will exit". I did some checking and it seems I can still install the driver but I'm going to have to find the zip file, rather than the exe file and install the driver manually. I do intend to try that when I get around to it but something tells me it won't make much difference. CQ - Yes. Syberia is an amazing game but when you get stuck, it can be tempting not to play for a while.Yes. It was the second game I bought when I got my Xbox (After Morrowind). Unfortunately, I had far more patience (and skill) with RPGs when I smoked weed. In Morrowind, I had created some awesome enchanted weapons that could kill just about anything and had figured out how to make myself basically invincible. I tried playing Morrowind recently and couldn't get anywhere at all. Perhaps I will take up KOTOR again sometime and see what I can do. I do remember being impressed with it. I just haven't played it for a long time. [Link] |
| Zoid Senior Member Boobies and Anal 2004 Posts 5/04 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 1:41PM As far as I know, audio drivers can also cause stuttering in videos. Edited by - Zoid on 5/19/2008 1:41:23 PM [Link] |
| Zoid Senior Member Boobies and Anal 2004 Posts 5/04 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 1:44PM Did you play The Longest Journey? Awesome game. [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 3:39PM I've looked all in the setup menus for WMP 11 and tried different settings for everything that looked suspicious. The only settings that even seem to make a difference only make matters worse in some way or another. So I just don't use WMP 11. Vista won't let you uninstall WMP or downgrade to an earlier version as far as I can tell. So I've been using MPC for some time. Which is a good basic player but seems to lack color controls (unless I just can't figure it out) and has too many unexplained settings to mess around with trying to see if this setting or that setting screws things up or makes them better. I'm currently trying out K Media Player, which at least has color controls that are easy to use but the configuration is pretty nightmarish. As far as I know, thinking back, I've had glitchy video (to varying degrees) since I bought this computer so I don't think it's the codecs. I've had many different codec packages installed and uninstalled but they all seem to woprk pretty much the same. And if I'm not mistaken, I had the same playback issues when I tried out Ubuntu and played some videos using one of the Ubuntu compatible players. It does seem to be an issue with most video formats. Although the ones with higher bitrates do seem much worse. Relatively low (video) bitrate Divx files (Say, under 1500) usually play OK but if I encode something to a higher bitrate Divx file, I get the glitchy video. VOB files seem to vary a bit. If I buy a Hollywood movie and play it in my DVD player with Power DVD, it usually plays OK as long as I don't have anything that is consuming a lot of resources running at the same time. I do have one DVD that seems to have some video problems. David Gilmour's recent DVD release kind of hesitates here and there. It's especially noticeable when the camera is in motion. Long, sweeping camera movements seem to cause some kind of distortions. But if I capture a video from my digital camcorder and encode it to a VOB, AVI or basically any other format with a high enough bitrate to make sure there's little or no loss of quality, I will probably get glitchy video. I've tried several different frame rates and that doesn't seem to make a difference. The audio format also doesn't seem to make a difference. I'm just wondering what's up. I don't think it should be a problem to play most video files on a recent computer. It is a cheap Emachines. I even tried what few adjustments there are for the integrated graphics in my BIOS. None of the changes I made seemed to make any perceptible difference. I have plenty of RAM but it won't let me select over a certain amount of system RAM (Somewhere around 200 MB) to share with the graphics. The CPU use seems to hover between 50% and 80% when the media player is running. It goes back down to around 5% if I pause the player and minimize it. [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 3:39PM Since getting sober in february I have played through: The Longest Journey Dreamfall: The Longest Journey 2 - The puzzles weren't too tough and it was a beautiful game, a joy to play. Evil Days of Luckless John - Aside from the driving parts being very tough this game was fun and funny Jack Keane - Lots of fun, looked great very funny but a very obvious rip off of Monkey Island ALL of the Sam and Max episodic content, I believe there are a total of 11 episodes in both seasons, I think each one costs between 10-20 bucks to download and will keep you occupied for a while if you don't use the built in hint system. I tried to get into Overclocked: A history of violence (what an awful name, eh?), it's still on my machine and I will give it another go sometime. Today I am going to attempt to track down an English language copy of Simon the Sorcerer 4 I have lots of free time. If you want links to read about any of these things let me know but otherwise check out gamefaqs.com for reviews. [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 3:51PM Mine, however, is not refurbished. Many stores list this computer as a refurbished item. I bought mine new at Best Buy. Everything is stock except that I added another gig of memory and a Creative sound card. Edited by - randomprecision on 5/19/2008 3:52:56 PM [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 4:03PM Some video codec packs sort of overlap in the sense that for example more then 1 codec will let you play divx files. What I am getting at here is maybe you have conflicting codecs installed. For instance I was trying to play a song that I had ripped about 7 years ago using windows media player. I no longer have windows media player because over the years I learned that it stinks but as a consequence of that I couldn't play this song. I went and found a codec that would let me play DRM'd windows shit and when I installed I found it could be a replacement for lots of other things that I have and are already working fine. Hope that made sense. [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 4:13PM [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 4:19PM I am on XP and I think you use vista so the problems might not be similar. [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 4:19PM If you can install the newer Intel drivers, that will help. You might call Intel Customer Support directly. If the updated drivers don't solve the problem, you'll probably need to pop for a new graphics card -- that is, unless you plan to upgrade your entire platform fairly soon, in which case I'd suggest waiting. Does your motherboard support an AGP graphics card or a PCI-E card? Either way, if your primary interest is in video playback, I'd suggest an ATI Radeon card; if it's 3-D gaming, then an Nvidia card instead. You won't need to buy a hugely expense graphics card in order to get the boost you want in video playback. TomsHardware.com has an interactive graphics-card comparison chart, as well as frequently updated articles on the best graphics cards for the money. [Link] |
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| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 4:23PM You can find a nVidia geforce 7600gt for around 75 bucks, possibly lower. (I paid around 225 canadian for one when they first came out) [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 4:38PM [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 5:23PM That lag time could be caused by your hard drive not getting the data to the graphics card fast enough, or it could be caused by your graphics card not processing the data it gets fast enough. What concerns me is that your Newegg link doesn't specify any graphics memory, it just lists main memory for your machine. If the graphics chipset doesn't have any dedicated memory then I think we've found your problem. If the motherboard has no place for you to add graphics memory then think about getting a video card. BTW, in case you haven't looked into it, here's your chipset. PS - I'm concerned about your statement that hovering your mouse pointer over the controls of WMP slowed down the video. That doesn't sound like a hardware problem, that sounds like bad software coding. Hopefully, it's coding in WMP, not in Vista. [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 5:45PM I don't have the seek slider issues with other players. Just WMP 11. I had thought to try using a plain Windows Classic visual style on WMP but it won't let me change it. Here's what it says about the memory on the link you provided - "Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT) 3.0 supports up to 224MB of video memory; system memory is allocated where it is needed dynamically." Edit - And I seem to have the same video issues when I play a video off of one of my external USB 2 hard drives. Edited by - randomprecision on 5/19/2008 5:49:40 PM [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 5:57PM [Link] |
| RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 6:01PM [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 6:16PM [Link] |
| Zoid Senior Member Boobies and Anal 2004 Posts 5/04 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 8:33PM [Link] |
| Zoid Senior Member Boobies and Anal 2004 Posts 5/04 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 8:40PM [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 8:54PM @Zoid: I have read that also. That means I will probably not ever find out what happens in the game. I have lost too many friends to MMO's, my games need to have endings. [Link] |
| Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 10:21PM It doesn't look like there's much room next to the PCI-E slot that conquistador pointed out. You may have a problem trying to fit some of the higher power video cards into that space, seeing as how they have big fans and other stuff hanging off of them these days. You may want to get a card from a place that allows you to return it at no charge. [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 10:32PM And even a cheap PCI-E graphics board will beat the pants off of the on board one. I recommend this one from new egg, a geforce7600gs It doesn't do DirectX10 but it is only 52 bucks. [Link] |
| Bill All-Star Member 5334 Posts 6/00 | Posted - May 19 2008 : 11:08PM I have an EVGA 8600GT with 512MB that I have no use for. When the fan on the video card that came with my PC (a different brand 8600GT) started to go bad, the PC builder gave me a new one (this time an EVGA). However, by the time that I received the replacement, I had decided to upgrade to an 8800GTS card. If you want it, let me know and I'll send it to you. Because it was an OEM swap, I don't have the cables, adapters or the driver CD. But you can download the current driver files from either the EVGA or NVIDIA websites. [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 20 2008 : 2:45AM If you're running your computer with just the original amount of RAM (2 x 512MB of DDR2-533), you can pick up [ invalid url ] for dirt cheap. Vista is RAM hungry, so another 1GB will give you some extra snap. [Link] |
| conquistador Deactivated User Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03 | Posted - May 20 2008 : 2:55AM [Link] |
| Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03 | Posted - May 20 2008 : 12:26PM Er, uh . . . brain fart. [Link] |
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