Major lag playing 1080p MKV videos on VLC

Gjohnson7771

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Nov 24, 2012
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10,510
Ok, I know my computer is old and I really need to build something newer, but I'm wondering if there is anything I can do to get this to work in the mean time. I have a old Dell XPS 400 with 4 gs of Ram and a new 120 gb SSD. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit and I have an 1 terabyte WD My Book that has about 700 gbs of AVI and MKVs. Some files are 1080p and when I try to play the files on my PC I have a major lag. Sometimes the audio can be 15 to 20 seconds a head of the video. Is there anything I can do to correct this? Do I need to move the files I want to watch to my SSD first and then try to play?

Thanks for any help.
 

dingo07

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Jan 5, 2012
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18,960
you have a cpu/video bottleneck that you cannot solve other than installing a video card

you can try installing 4GB more ram and putting the videos on the SSD, but those are superficial fixes IMO
 

Gjohnson7771

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Nov 24, 2012
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10,510
Crap. What about streaming the videos to my PS3 or Xbox 360? Will I have the same issue?
I don't think I can upgrade my Ram any further. I guess I really need to look into building a Media PC.
 

Gjohnson7771

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Nov 24, 2012
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10,510
The only other thing I can think about doing is reformatting the external hard drive so that I can plug it into the PS3 and view them directly instead of streaming. For the PS3 to recognize the external HHD it has to be formatted as FAT32, which of course will delete all files.