4k open ended

[kwarren]

I have a couple slightly older regular [86-64] desktop combinations. Some of them with slightly more graphics card memory, some variation in bus speeds, etc. clarification: the newest & most powerful graphics card of those is a GTX 660, and it happens to be connected to a pcie2.0[though the 660 supports up to pcie3.0] slot. It does a *pretty* good job with *most* games / graphic intensive stuff. I was somewhat surprised to see it completely choke with 4k movies.

I've already ordered a rock64, though it's still not arrived [nearly irrelevant to this post].

Just curious: does it do a pretty solid job with 4k movies? Also out of curiosity: What do you think the weak link is in my aging desktop for 4k? pcie2.0? age in general? What makes newer micro devices capable of 4k? is it more about bus speed, or specific encoding / gpu circuitry that just does 4k?

[kwarren]

Turned out the gtx 660 handled 4k pretty well, the problem was the video player. I had to try quite a few before I found one that worked. Maybe on a newer, more powerful system it wouldn't be such a big deal, but on this minimal aging one it seemed crucial that the video player efficiently decode and use hardware support. Even with proper configurations many of them are less efficient than others. VLC performed terribly! mplay/smplayer almost. KODI works