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[MikeO]

Hi

When I retired , I bought a new Desktop PC and that leaves me with my old (2yr) lap top spare .

Currently my Media PC is an i3 Lenovo laptop with 4Gb RAM, and built in Intel Graphics 3000 but no graphics GPU. Its stripped down to really only MC 20

My lap top has i7 8Gb of RAM , Samsung and built in Intel 3000 graphics but a NVidia GPU (Geforce 520MX). Both run Win 8.1 64bit

The i7 is my old Dev machine with Sql Server , Visual Studio +++++ all loaded so I wonder whether to use it as the media PC or keep it fully loaded as a spare dev machine.

I would like to keep my Media PC as "bare" as possible so if I choose the i7 I would probably strip off all but MC20.

I think the answer is a no brainer but before I start to strip off my development software the question ...

Running BluRay rips as the highest quality , would I notice the difference of the GPU given that the built in graphics are the same, from what I can read it seems the GPU is needed primarily for games which I do not get involved with at all.

Any thoughts ??

Cheers

Mike

[BryanC]

Mike,

You'll need a fast graphics card (probably faster than any laptop graphics card except for the mobile version of the high-end cards that are only available in ~$2000 gaming laptops) in order to run the madVR renderer in Red October HQ. madVR is an incredibly high-quality renderer compared to the standard EVR available in Windows. MC uses madVR in its Red October HQ mode, while it utilizes standard EVR in Red October Standard. However, the biggest quality differences between the two are when you are upsampling content, which isn't what it appears you'll be doing if you are playing 1080p Blurays on a 1080p screen. It's doubtful you'll be any the wiser running Red October Standard.

Any modern Core processor will be able to play Bluray with or without hardware video acceleration. In other words, the i3 laptop is sufficient to playback full Blu-ray using Red October Standard.

Cheers!

[MikeO]

Thanks for that

You are right my requirements are just 1080p from Blu Ray rips or HD TV copies or DVD quality. My screen is 1080p

I hadn't even considered the Red October HQ bits

Mike

[6233638]

madVR works on some pretty low-end hardware too if you reduce the settings.
I have an old GT610 ($40) and an older system with a built-in GeForce 9400 that can run madVR just fine at the lower settings.
Now I'd prefer to use something a bit faster if you're going to buy a new GPU for it (perhaps spend $100 on a GTX750) but you can still get good results on a lower-end system.
 
But it's difficult to say what will work, and what won't. You just have to try it really.

[BryanC]

HD TV copies or DVD quality

This is when using madVR will give you tangible benefits. 6233638 is right that you can play with the madVR settings if you want. It can take quite a bit of fiddling however, and isn't officially supported by JRiver. A 520MX is really the low-end of borderline for Red October HQ. Let me tell you what the worst thing to do is (from experience): setting up your renderer settings so that 99% of your content plays flawlessly. Because that 1% (dropped frames during action sequences, issues with bad encodes that aren't compatible with hardware acceleration, frame rate doubling, etc) will drive you insane.

If I was in your position and didn't have use for a laptop, I'd consider selling the laptops and building a cheap Pentium-based HTPC with an efficient last-gen video card like an HD7850 or nVidia equivalent.

[MikeO]

Its probably more tricky than that as the PC I use is lap top, so its not quite so easy to just "stick in a new card".

I have done the inevitable side by side comparison between the 2 PC's and to be honest I can't see any real difference.

So its let sleeping dogs lie I think

Thanks for the help

Mike