What's best hardware acceleration setting?

thebigdintx

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I'm having some choppy streaming video playback, as usual, on my old, weak spec'd laptop (intel pentium 3 @ 1GHz, maxed out at 512MB ram, nvidia geforce2go graphics, windows xp home) and was wondering what the best "Hardware Acceleration" setting was to get the best experience possible on it. Below the setting there is also a box to check or uncheck for "Enable Write Combining", so what's your thoughts on that also? I left the box checked for now (as was the default setting), and have lowered the slider setting to "disable all but basic acceleration"...that seems to have made the streaming video a little smoother. Should i turn it all the way off? should i uncheck the enable write combining box? any suggestions appreciated (except buying a new laptop..haha,..cant do that right now).
 
Surely, the more the hardware is used, the better the video should be, since it won't be running all off software acceleration?

"Write combining (WC) is a computer bus technique for allowing data to be combined and temporarily stored in a buffer -- the write combine buffer (WCB) -- to be released together later in burst mode instead of writing (immediately) as single bits or small chunks.

Write combining cannot be used for general memory access (data or code regions) due to the 'weak ordering'. Write-combining does not guarantee that the combination of writes and reads is done in the correct order. For example, a Write/Read/Write Combination to a specific address would lead to the write combining order of Read/Write/Write which can lead to obtaining wrong values with the first read (which potentially relies on the write before). So this technique can only be used for Memory which does not need 'Strong Ordering' (always correct) like Frame Buffer of Video Cards."

*Taken off Wikipedia :)

I'd try disabling it... I don't know wheather it is needed or not.
 
Yeah,,thanks for the response, but i had found that definition of write combining already on wikipedia and read it, but it still did not solve the question for me. If the data is temporarily stored in the write combine buffer (WCB) is that storing it on my memory (of which i don't have much...512 MB), so maybe it would be better with it off?

I was hoping for someone who knew for sure what the best settings for those two options were (hardware acceleration and write combining) for such a weak system to be all that it can be.
 
Thought about linux?

yeah, but i don't think i want to go through all that. xp works fine for what i use that laptop for (just surfin the web)....i like the simplicity and compatibility that xp offers. i'm just trying to get these 2 settings on the best possible setting to make the video look the best it can when i watch a news clip or cnettv or something...nothing too demanding.

edit: i've disabled the video hardware acceleration, and the video plays smooth now, however, if i move the mouse around at all while the video is playing, it freezes up the video....the audio keeps playing just fine, and when i stop moving the mouse around, the video starts playing again.
 
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