mini-PCIe Upgrades

[RTAdams89]

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?

[vinuneuro]

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.

[RTAdams89]

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!

[vinuneuro]

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

[RTAdams89]

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)?

[mshe]

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.

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.