Red October is generally viewed as a significant step forward for MC in handling video. It is clear, though, that many users, myself included, are still struggling to get the best out of it.
One of the problems I am struggling with is what is the minimum CPU and GPU requirement to get good results for Red October standard and HQ. The JRiver wiki says that we need an i5 or better processor. The problem here is that there is a range of i5 CPUs with significant variation in capability - number of cores, hyper threading, clock speed etc, and the wiki says nothing about GPU. Does the OS make a difference and does it need to be 64 bit? I have an i5 K655 running at 3.2 GHz and an NVIDIA 8600 graphics card. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit. I can run Red October standard but get frequent tearing across the screen and regular jumping of the picture, even with frame rates set correctly and ReClock running. With Red October HQ, the jumping is very bad.
So how are we to know what is required to get the best result? I feel that we need better guidance than we have at present. Is the Windows Experience Index which Windows produces any help here. If you right click on Computer and choose properties, the rating is shown and is broken down if you click on Windows Experience Index. My overall rating is 6.5. The breakdown is:
Processor calculations per second: 6.9
Memory operations per second: 7.0
Graphics desktop performance: 6.5
Gaming graphics: 6.5
Disk transfer rate: 7.1
Can these numbers be used to set criteria for successful use of the Red October options? If not, what is the alternative?
Nick.
