Thinkpads Forum

I ordered my T400 with only a 802.11b/g card installed (no turbo memory or WLAN card). Therefore, I believe I should have two mini-PCIe slots available (correct?). I've thought of a few things I'd like to add to the T400, but want to know if they will work before buying parts:

1) Installing a AVC/VC-1/H.264 Enhanced Hardware Decoder/Accelerator (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product). I have integrated graphics and video playback can occasionally be choppy. I'm wondering if a card like this will make a difference?

2) Installing a Digital TV card, and connecting it to the unused WLAN antenna for OTA broadcasts. Is there a WLAN antenna installed if I didn't order my laptop with a WLAN card? Will that antenna be sufficient for OTA broadcast reception?

The 4500MHD can play everything including h.264/1080p material. hardware accelerated. If you're experiencing stuttering there's something else going on. Using a good quality player like MPC-HC is the first step.

WLAN antennas can't pickup OTA tv signal.

I guess I knew the Intel 4500MHD can play 1080P HD content, but would having a card dedicated to hardware acceleration take some of the load off the graphics chipset and thereby free up it's resources to do other things more efficiently?

And I also know that WLAN antennas aren't designed to pick up OTA TV, but will they be completely ineffective, or just not as good as a antenna designed for that purpose?

Thanks for the help so far!

What do you want the graphics chipset to do apart from handle graphics processing.

vinuneuro wrote:What do you want the graphics chipset to do apart from handle graphics processing.

Oh, make me waffles and such. No, but for example if I were to hypothetically have a video playing and be running a game, the 4500MHD would be doing everything. If I added a decoder card, would it take over the decoding thereby allowing the 4500MHD to better handle the game? A more practical example might be watching a security camera video stream (encoded with h.264) and watching TV/video on an external monitor simultaneously.

The latter example is what I am hoping to do and while I was looking for decoder cards, I go to thinking about what else I could put in the open mini-PCIe slots. So if the decoder card won't make any difference, any ideas (other than an SSD)?

The Broadcom Crystal HD does indeed take the load off the CPU for HD decoding - but it only accelerates video in certain applications. I'm not sure if the card uses DirectShow or some other propreitary method of video acceleration.

I tired it on a Dell Laptop with a Nvidia card in it - running a 1080P MKV it used ~10% CPU. Without the card, it was around 23 - 35%.

You can get the generic Crystal HD card off eBay for ~25.00 - even cheaper than the Habey version on newegg.

RTAdams89 wrote: Oh, make me waffles and such. No, but for example if I were to hypothetically have a video playing and be running a game, the 4500MHD would be doing everything. If I added a decoder card, would it take over the decoding thereby allowing the 4500MHD to better handle the game? A more practical example might be watching a security camera video stream (encoded with h.264) and watching TV/video on an external monitor simultaneously.

TV cards typically use an overlay for output - therefore CPU usage is VERY low.

In general, with a i-series processor and the Intel HD GPU, there's no need for the accelerator. The original market for this card was netbooks which have vastly slower processors and GPUs.