I want to upgrade PC to play HD movies

" The rest of the hardware doesnt really have much of an impact on the playing of HD-DVDs" Very incorrect. First you most likely need a bit of an upgrade on your video card, as it is only 128MB, I would recommend atleast an 8600 or an 8800 GT.

Also while you CAN run your video on the setup you listed with the HD movies (not HD-DVD as the above poster assumed incorrectly), to play it SMOOTH, you need a few tweaks.

The video card as I stated at the begining will be the best thing.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/140985/play_hd_movies_on_almost_any_pc.html
This article explains the minimum requirements to play Hd movies.
The pricing in the article is about a year (and about 300%) out of date so don't rely on that but the rest of the information is pretty relevant.

If you plan on playing Blu-ray or H.264 movies (both require decoding), you will need a card equivalent to a Radeon HD series and a decent cpu: http://www.cyberlink.com/prog/support/cs/product-faq-content.do?id=2576.  If you watch uncompressed HD videos, you can get by with a much less powerful cpu, such as a midrange P4.

that pcwolrd link is pretty dead on..


Any ATi 3 series or higher does proper hd decoding, or NVIDIA 8800GTS (512 model) or newer will do HD content decoding for you,

most new motherboards with integratd video, only ATI and NVIDIA, can handle HD decoding, intel IGP sucks and offloads it to the CPU, (lazy intel)

example, i had an e4400 dual core, ran at 2ghz stock, with a 7600GT 720P content ran fine, however 1080 would drop frames now and then, i upped my cpu to 2.9Ghz and things ran smoothly after that, also newer nvidia drives helped, even though the 7600GT wasnt listed as a card to support HD offloading, my cpu usage drop to about 17% playing 1080 content vs the %35+ it was before.

Hardware DOES have a huge impact on playback, to say otherwise is incorrect, otherwise i would be playing HD content on my old Northword 3Ghz and radeon 9700 64mb laptop, but i cant, it isnt powerful enough, conisdering HD content can get upto 40MB+ in bitrate....


even downloaded HD content wont run on a old mid range P4.

you would want to add into your rig an X2 +5000 or higher, if you can and you should be okay to run HD content.

Also, for downloaded HD content, i do suggest CoreAVC, great software that makes good use of multiple cores.

I would suggest getting the fastest AMD X2 or Opteron processor for socket 939, but I don't think you can buy one any more, so you're stuck, unless you upgrade the motherboard, cpu, and RAM all at the same time.  The 6600GT is old technology and even SLI doesn't help it, compared to new cards.

I would suggest an Intel E7400 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115206, Asus P5Q SE/R motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131335, Corsair 2x2GB RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184 and Radeon HD4830 video card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131129.