[nmt1978]

Hi all

I had used my HTPC (Asus P5G41-M + CPU E7300 + Nvidia GF9500) for years with XBMC. It can handle 1080p 50/60Hz (with dvxa2 disable) although there are a very few sluggish in some action scenes but it is acceptable.

Recently i want some upgrades to be able to play full bluray or bluray iso file within xbmc and with dvxa2 enable (i heard that GPU decoding with hardware accleration will result in better image quality?)

What should i upgrade with minimum costs?

Thank you

[ertman]

Minimum cost upgrade:
GPU capable of the hardware acceleration you mentioned, you probably need to run windows 7 or better for dvxa2. Amd 5450 or 6450, nvidia gt520 or gt610, older cards might work.

Better image quality, not necessarily. Better performance, yes.

I am sure someone could offer better opinions/options.

[h.p.j.]

Depending on the amount of video memory your GPU should be sufficient for 1080p blu-ray (at least according to nvidia). How much VRAM do you have? However, it won't do 3D blu-rays.

[nmt1978]

i got 256MB VRAM, and running Win 7 with 2G Ram. I will try to add more Ram and increase VRAM to 512 to see if it is improved.

Do you know how to get my GF9500 to decode 1080p Bluray? because whenever i enable dvxa2, the playback is very lag even with 720p. If disabling dvxa2, the decoding will be done by CPU, but i am not sure my E7300 can handle 1080p bluray?

Any idea please

[h.p.j.]

In that case just get a new cheap video card.

My old laptop (Linux-based) had a GF8400M with 512 MB VRAM which was really not enough to decode 1080p. The thing is, when I reduced the the screen resolution to 640x480 in XBMC it would decode and display 1080p files just fine. But at higher screen resolutions I got out of memory errors from the video driver. Maybe you should check your XBMC-logs, too. In my case 512 MB just weren't enough.

[grin]

Will the integrated Intel HD4000 be sufficient to play bluray?