# Laptop Build for h.264



## Partick (Nov 23, 2007)

I'm looking to buy a portable machine as a sort-of desktop replacement. Not really 'building' it per-se, at least not by myself, but this seemed to be the most relevant forum regardless. If I'm in the wrong place, let me know. My original idea was to have a portable machine that could play 1080p h.264. I've since done some research, and found out that decoding h.264 in that resolution is something that even some reasonably decked out desktop machines can have trouble handling. If I'm mistaken, please correct me, but that's the impression I got. The container for these files is .mkv, if that matters at all.

I've since gotten my head out of the clouds, and I've decided that playing 720p would be adequate, as mobility in this case is more important than computing power.

Relevant specs for my proposed lappy are as follows:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7100 (1.8GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB) (upgradeable to 2.2GHz, with 4MB cache, if necessary)
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600M GT
7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Vista to start, because it comes with the machine, but I suspect I'll install either XP or Debian.

I'm not averse to changing my OS and/or partitioning to make this work, and I'm not much of a gamer, so having Windows * isn't really necessary.

Will I have trouble playing 720p h.264 with this build? Would you guys recommend upping the processor to 2.2G?

I also have a 1920x1200 screen, but if the computer can't put up the juice required to make full use of it, I'll probably downgrade that in favor of the processor upgrade.


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

That looks fine. Most any graphics cards should be able to do h.264 @ 1080p because it is 2D rendering and most of the load will in fact be on the CPU because of the decompression (although your CPU should be fine also). The higher end cards are for better 3D gaming. Right now the T7300 is the sweet spot so if you want to upgrade the processor that is what I would go with.


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