[darkpen]

Hi all, hoping to get some recommendations.

I'm running XBMC at 720p (well, 1368x768) on an old HP laptop (DV9625CA: AMD Turion X64 X2 @ 2GHz, 4Gb RAM, NVidia GeForce Go 7150M, Win7 x64). Media files are sitting on a Seagate 1Tb USB 2 7200rpm hard drive. The TV is the main and only display (the laptop screen is non-functional and disabled).

Now, I'm not sure if it's a configuration problem, but I get choppy video when playing anything at 720p (ie, the video seems to have to "catch up" every few frames where it goes really fast to sync back).

I was looking at maybe getting a Zotac Zbox Nano AD10, but looking through some other threads, it seems underpowered. Should I just stick with the Turion and try to work out the kinks, or is the laptop just too underpowered for HD video? It seemed to run fine when I was using Plex, but I switched back to XBMC for better subtitle support and because I just moved the media drive to the laptop (I had buffering problems when over wifi, but that's because the laptop is wireless-g).

Thanks for the help!

[bladeds]

i used do the same with my acer laptop with a amd turion x64 xs @ 2.1ghz with a amd/ati 3200 mobile graphics card. i had no problem playing 720p or 1080p video. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.ph...Force+630M i guess that is your problem passmark of 19 seems really low. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.ph...on+HD+3200 mine had 77. If you know where your mini pci express slot is you could tried a broadcom card http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=54552

[darkpen]

That's an idea. I know where the slot is, too, and it's easily accessible.

I had a feeling it might be the graphics chip choking. I guess with Plex it was just a matter of displaying whatever was transcoded instead of having to decode on top of it.

It only does it on certain MKV or MP4 files, too, which are fine on other systems. Even my ATV2 was doing fine, which is the frustrating part, as I thought this laptop would be more able to perform (it only had stuttering on menus and did fine on any video I threw at it).

[darkpen]

I messed up and ordered a 970012 instead of the 15. Is there a big difference for 720p? I'll ask the seller if he can swap the order in the meantime. *fingers crossed*

[bladeds]

I think I read before when people used them with the atv1 the main difference 1080p where as the 12 could only handle 720p smooth. I would check here http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=140450&page=2 since the xbmc team wiki guy ned-Scott is posting on here and is bound to know more than me.