With the video cards, and the measure of assistance they provide
in playback here, you still need a pretty decent processor. Notice
how uneven the results are, making it hard to select a winner
that does anything. If you know all the titles are H.264 only,
then the selection process would be easier.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/media-playback_7.html
They used a Core2 Duo E8500 at 3.16GHz. The Core2 architecture
is 1.5 to 1.8x faster than the P4 generation. I presume (but there
is no way to tell from that article, that both cores are used
during playback. That means the E8500 could be up to 3.6x faster
than your processor. Taking the inverse, that is about 28% as seen
on those charts. If a chart entry needs more than 28%, then your
processor is running at 100%.
It appears in that article, that some of the best video accaleration
is present in the integrated graphics of some new motherboards. It would
suggest the Northbridge has been optimized for video, so is turning in
some of the best numbers. The acceleration provided by the built-in
hardware, is proportional to its clock rate. And the hardware tends to be
independent of the portion of the GPU that accelerates games. But they
do share the same clock source.
If you were to use a new motherboard, and its built-in graphics, then
game play in 3D would probably suck, but movie playback could be smoother.
But if you were going for a new motherboard, you could also use
a processor with a higher effective clock rate as well.
This is an article that used a previous generation of video cards
and an X6800 Core2 Duo at 3GHz. Again, you can see it is using
a pretty healthy chunk of CPU capacity. These cards didn't provide
quite as much acceleration.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2886&p=4
Take your time, and find a few more articles, before
spending big money on this project. I suspect there
is a danger you could end up with dropped frames or
stuttering, if the hardware you currently own is
not sufficient. Perhaps some tests, using the latest
version available of software that plays Blueray titles,
and using some downloaded test files of some sort, will
give you an idea of what will happen when you get the
actual Blueray player. Then at least, all you're out of
pocket, is the cost of a playback software program.
The processor in this test, is about twice as powerful as
yours, so you'd double the CPU utilization numbers in the
chart. At least for the movie titles selected, it looks
like a Geforce 8600 GT is enough. One difference in this
test, compared to the Xbitlabs test, is Xbitlabs included
some Picture In Picture tests (presumably a feature that
exists on some Blueray titles). So this test may not
be exercising all of the Blueray capabilities.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2977&p=4
You can see from the piles of numbers produced, it can
be difficult to make a good call.
By supporting HDCP, a lot of the video cards used in those
tests will be allowed to drive a high resolution display.
Without HDCP at both ends fo the video monitor cable, the
OS may prevent certain things from happening. HDCP is part
of the HDMI standard (so if the video card had
an HDMI connector, you wouldn't have to ask the question),
but with older DVI connector video cards, HDCP was
optional and not always implemented. There was a bit
of a stink when HDCP support first came out, because
the GPU supported it, but the video card makers didn't
include the keys in an EEPROM to make it work. That
would be less likely to be an issue now, with the
latest video cards. Reading an article on HDCP should
also be part of your research (and the reference section
here can give some other web pages to read). Without
HDCP to protect the movie industry, you'll be restricted
to lower resolution (or no) output.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdcp
Paul
