I’ve got a Dell XPS L502X laptop. It’s a few years old. It’s got an Intel Core i5 2.40GHz processor and 8GB of RAM (upgraded from 4GB), and is running Windows 7 Home Premium.

I’ve just got a new GoPro and filmed some video at 1440p. It won’t playback properly at all without jumping. My old GoPro 960 video files ok.

I’ve added the CPU and RAM performance monitoring widgets to my desktop, and when I play a video file from my new GoPro the CPU dial goes to max.

Is my laptop simply not up to the job? I’m guessing CPU upgrade options are limited? Can anyone recommend a good value laptop/pc that would do the job?

Thanks!

What are you trying to play the file with?

I found VLC works fine, after other programs were a bit laggy on my old XPS?

Yeah, try the software first.

We have an old i5 Dell and for some reason it’s a complete dog, so much so it performs about as well as it’s 10 year old cousin with half the ram, half the cores and half the speed.

Video will depend a lot on the graphics chip and whether the software you are using are correctly using the hardware accelerated features of the chip (if any).

Software can include the codecs (stuff applications use to play videos) and drivers.

Often PCs come bundled with rubbish software and poor codecs, or something you download replaces good codecs with rubbish ones.

Could try the K-Lite codec pack.

The player itself makes a difference. On an old slow netbook I used to find videos played better through MediaPortal than through players like VLC, Windows Media Player or even Media Player Classic. I also used CoreAVC which is a special codec that accelerates well in software. Good for low spec graphics hardware.

Other thing is the video file format. Some may work better on your system than others.

Another thought – if you do use VLC make sure you have ‘enable hardware acceleration’ ticked.

What resolution is the screen ?

I’ve tried VLC already and to be honest it’s slightly worse than Windows Media Player. The file is an MP4.

The laptop has an Nvidia Geforce GT525M graphics card. I think it’s an integrated rather than dedicated, but can’t remember if it’s 128 or 256mb.

Edit: In the VLC settings the ‘Accelerated video output (Overlay)’ box was already ticked. I’ve now also ticked the ‘Use hardware YUV-RGB conversions’ and I don’t know if it’s coincidence but the files now play! They freeze once or twice but otherwise mostly smooth, and CPU usage doesn’t go above 40%? Strange!