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General discussion

Jerky video - could it be the video card?

Jan 22, 2005 10:26AM PST

I just purchased a pretty powerful HP Pavilion a830n (http://www.exactchoice.com/profile_3266.aspx). The picture quality is just fine when I'm looking at a basically static image, but when I'm watching videos with a lot of movement (for ex, a video of a horse running) the video is very jerky and slow to react to quick changes. Could this because of a cheap video card? I don't understand why this is happening because my old computer (a Compaq Presario from around 5 years ago that is a lot less powerful) plays videos fine. Thanks for your input.

Discussion is locked

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What kind of monitor? If it's an LCD, that is most likely
Jan 22, 2005 3:13PM PST

the source of your problem. LCDs have something called latency which means that they may not respond well to rapid changes. This is particularly true of inexpensive ones.

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I tried my old monitor - same problem.
Jan 23, 2005 1:51AM PST

Hey, thanks for replying. I tried using my old monitor and I had the same problem, thus I assumed the problem was with my computer (and I guess more specifically, with my graphics card).

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Video
Jan 23, 2005 2:31AM PST

How many apps are running in the back ground?
Most prebuilt machines have to many apps running all the time.
Ram?
XP updates and HP website updates?
Directx?

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Computer Specs
Jan 23, 2005 2:56AM PST

"How many apps are running in the back ground?
Most prebuilt machines have to many apps running all the time.
Ram?"

Well, this machine has an Intel Pentium 4 540J (3.20GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB), and 1GB DDR SDRAM (400MHz, 2 modules) so it's probably unlikely that memory-drain is the problem. Thanks for the advice. Take care.

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OK, what does it use for video? If it's built in, you should
Jan 24, 2005 1:46AM PST

probably consider upgrading anyway. A machine that powerful probably should have a fast video card just on general principles.

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The website he bought
Jan 24, 2005 6:04AM PST

from says its onboard and not meant for games and video.

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It is the video card.
Jan 28, 2005 5:33AM PST

... or the lack of one. I checked out the specs on your new computer and saw that instead of having a dedicated video card it has what they call integrated graphics. Which means that there is a graphics processor mounted on the motherboard of the computer and therefore the video processing will take up system memory and CPU cycles.

The good news... your computer comes with 1 PCIe slot which is a PCI express slot which is the newest way of connecting a video card. You can very easily get a PCI express video card at an online merchant for under $100 bucks. Once installed, (read HP manual in case you have to TURN OFF integrated video) your video should be screamin' in comparison.

Fre.