Re: Putting together a computer from old components

On 12/4/2021 11:00 AM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Dec 2021 15:56:11 -0000 (UTC)
> Spiros Bousbouras <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 14:34:56 -0500
>> Paul <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Is there a specific objective this computer has to meet ?
>>> Is it running the heating system, recording security video,
>>> stuck in the loft ?
>>
>> General desktop usage : writing text , computer programming (nothing too
>> long) , watching videos and DVDs , listening to audio CDs , internet browsing
>> (mainly with a text browser.I'm not worried about slowness with a graphical
>> browser so lets not get stuck on that) , running chess engines (I don't need
>> maximum performance). See also  <[email protected]>  in this
>> thread.
> 
> I describe my current usage also in  <[email protected]> .
> 
>> I also have an external hard disk which I connect through a USB port. The disk
>> mostly has videos in 360p or 720p resolution and I want the transfer rate to
>> be good enough that I can watch them at normal playback speed (using  mplayer) .
>>
>> I also want to be able to connect a DVD reader/writer ; no need for blu-ray.

The playback of videos seems the most demanding thing.

The reason I advocate for hardware acceleration, is there
is a lot of variation in the software code written for
the decoding of video. There can be a 10:1 difference between
the best and worst codes, for a particular video format.

This might be similar to Skybucks system. The caps failed on his
two boards, so that's a negative.

https://pcper.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/11/2ce0-blockdiagram.jpg

But chipsets like that at least have PCI Express slots. You can
fit a more modern video card to get the benefit of hardware
video decoding. But even the used prices of video cards like
these, can be too high.

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

To do better on an Intel, you'd want a processor with QuickSync,
which is the Intel built-in decoder.

And AMD systems more modern than the S939 in the above block diagram
(where the RAM is connected directly to the S939 processor),
some of those have built-in graphics. Those have variously
been called "APUs", because they are both CPU+GPU. If a built-in
graphics is provided, then it can mean not having to shop for
a separate video card to reap the benefit of hardware video
decode.

    Paul