No h.264 playback?

Unfortunately there are still issues with the latest drivers and the free, DXVA enabled Media Player Classic: Home Cinema edition software. Following advice from our readers, we tried the very latest (experimental) build of MPC:HC, not just the last official available download on Sourceforge, but it didn't alleviate our playback issues. Until we resolve this issue we cannot get an accurate result for h.264 playback on the HD 5450 and 785G.

Blu-ray Playback Performance

We used the same a Pioneer BDR-203BK Blu-ray drive and Enermax Eco80 350W PSU across all these tests when measuring power consumption. We used Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 Ultra and the Dolby: Sound of High Definition Blu-ray, with the NIN clip that was recorded with Dolby TrueHD surround sound (although it was downsampled since we did not use a compatible decoder).


We have included power consumption figures at the wall socket to show that even despite high or low CPU usage, the actual system power used can be reflected differently.


The CPU usage with Blu-ray playback is identical to that of the 785G, however the addition of the Radeon HD 5450 naturally increases the power consumption by several watts. Even with the HD 5450, it's certainly not a high power usage system, and the addition of extra Blu-ray playback features will be worth the effort if you're serious about your movies. And besides, if that's the case it'll be plugged into a big amp, huge TV and a serious set of speakers, so clearly you'll not be looking to save 12W.

That said, the Core i3-530 does provide the same level of experience and its system cost is the same too. You could compensate this fact by downgrading the CPU - after all, during Blu-ray playback the Phenom II X2 550 BE doesn't exceed its 800MHz lowest power state, so even a very basic Athlon/Athlon II will save money and some additional power, but at the cost of further productivity performance.