Would a Core 2 Duo be enough for a pc to stream videos?

[Claymoresama]

I'm looking to either build or repurpose a computer and a a graphics card for the purpose of streaming videos. I'd much rather just buy a cheap GPU if I can do that and save some money. My work is retiring their old Core 2 duo machines. I don't know what core 2's are in these machines but I'd ball park it around 2.0 to 2.33 ghz. Do you think that a core 2 like that would be sufficient to stream content from sites like Netflix, Youtube, and various other televsion streaming sites? My plan is to just buy a cheap gpu and install it into that pc and hope that it works enough to stream content. If you think this will work, what GPU in the 50-70 dollar (US dollar) price point would be sufficient? Also if you're wondering about RAM I will most likely be just fine to scrounge up 4gb of ram at least.

 

[smorizio]

http://www.piriform.com/speccy
run crucial memory advisior it free it tell you if there any ram slots open and the max the mb can use before you order some costly ddr2 ram and find out it wont work. from it age the unit may use agp video slot and not pci video also may use ide and not sata drives now. if it was me i look on newegg for newer dyi parts pc. look for g3258 or an i3 or an amd apu. with an amd apu it already has a good video card built into the cpu. it use cheaper ddr3 ram and sata drives.

 

[MU_Engineer]

I'm looking to either build or repurpose a computer and a a graphics card for the purpose of streaming videos. I'd much rather just buy a cheap GPU if I can do that and save some money. My work is retiring their old Core 2 duo machines. I don't know what core 2's are in these machines but I'd ball park it around 2.0 to 2.33 ghz. Do you think that a core 2 like that would be sufficient to stream content from sites like Netflix, Youtube, and various other televsion streaming sites? My plan is to just buy a cheap gpu and install it into that pc and hope that it works enough to stream content. If you think this will work, what GPU in the 50-70 dollar (US dollar) price point would be sufficient? Also if you're wondering about RAM I will most likely be just fine to scrounge up 4gb of ram at least.

It all depends on the codec used, the specific player they use, and the resolution you want to play back at.

1. Nearly all standalone-program video players like VLC and Windows Media Player as well as some online video players like Flash Player can hook into your GPU and use your GPU's decode ASIC hardware to play back video. You could have the crappiest single-core Core 2 Celeron and it will happily play 4K video as long as you have a relatively new video card as the GPU is doing all of the work. The price of the GPU doesn't matter as the decode hardware is essentially the same in all of the video cards in a specific generation. Ironically, the cheaper ones can sometimes have better video decode hardware as they came later on in the development cycle. A $50 GPU is plenty sufficient. Just make sure it is a PCI Express x16 unit and not a PCI one and you're good to go. That is what I did with my HTPC- 10-year-old Core Duo CPU coupled with a PCIe x16 GeForce G210 that does all of the "heavy lifting." It works great for the 1080p H.264 I run through it with my DVR program.

2. Codec- really only matters if your player does not use the GPU to do the decoding. A low 2 GHz Core 2 Duo will play back any MPEG-2 file on its own just fine. It will play back 720p H.264 fine but may struggle with 1080i or 1080p H.264 depending on the bitrate for the 1080p and what kind of deinterlacing you use for 1080i. In general, a low 2 GHz Core 2 Duo isn't that great for 1080-line H.264. You'd want one around 3 GHz to do that work.

3. RAM does not matter much, you just need enough to run your OS and video player/web browser. 4 GB is more than fine for a Microsoft OS.

 

[MU_Engineer]

http://www.piriform.com/speccy
run crucial memory advisior it free it tell you if there any ram slots open and the max the mb can use before you order some costly ddr2 ram and find out it wont work. from it age the unit may use agp video slot and not pci video also may use ide and not sata drives now. if it was me i look on newegg for newer dyi parts pc. look for g3258 or an i3 or an amd apu. with an amd apu it already has a good video card built into the cpu. it use cheaper ddr3 ram and sata drives.

Any Core 2 business machine is going to use either the ATi Radeon Xpress 200 or the Intel G945, G965, or one of the B, G, or Q 30 or 40-series chipsets. All of them have PCI Express slots, all have SATA ports, and nearly all use DDR2. A very small number of the last Core 2 boards were set up to use DDR3. There were a few very uncommon, expensive, aftermarket boards made very early on in the Core 2 generation made with the 865/875 chipset that were DDR/AGP boards so people could use their old enthusiast AGP cards and DDR RAM, but even those had SATA ports. You have to go way back to the first DDR Pentium 4 chipset (845) from 2001-2002 to get a unit without SATA.