4K on Windows 7

[matthers]

Hi
Just bought a 4K TV and am still running Windows 7 Media Center. Thought i'd see if it could handle some 4k content - both SDR and HDR. Both stutter very badly and the CPU maxes out, even when using VLC outside of Media Center. I was wondering if anyone knew the minimum specs to get 4K playback working? If i upgrade the graphics card to something better, would it be sufficient to allow me to keep the existing AMD Phenom II x940 CPU and 8GB of RAM? Was reading that the Pi 4 can handle 4K playback - the GPU on that can't be that great can it? Can anyone suggest an inexpensive graphics card which would be sufficient to handle 4K playback?
Thanks

[stuartm]

You don't list your current graphics card so it's hard to be certain. I have seen reports the a GT1050 (or better presumably) can do 4k (HEVC) with no problem. I can't tell you from first hand experience as I still just use 1080P out from WMC and let my 4k TV scale things,

Actually a little googling shows the low cost entry level gt 1030 is supposedly capable of 4k 60 fps HVEC. so you might try one of those.

[matthers]

Thanks for the reply Stuart. Should have said I have a GeForce GT710 currently. I tried increasing the resolution last night from 1920x1080 to 4096x2160 but it couldn't go anything above 1920x1080. I know there's practically no 4K media out there at the moment but to test it I was using the very cool videos which Apple took which come in all different resolutions. I use them for a screensaver on my Mac but there is a way to have them as a screensaver on your PC too. You can download just the video clips from here, which are underwater, space and drone footage over big world landmarks - https://aerial-screensavers.netlify.app/. I actually uploaded the 4K SDR and HDR videos to Plex to allow me to access them through the TV natively instead of via the resolution restricted media center. It did play them smoothly but am now wondering if the Plex server which i have running on my NAS would have transcoded them and dropped the resolution. Not sure. Will check out the GT1050 which is way cheaper than looking at spending hundreds of dollars on a new card. Cheers

[IT Troll]

I have a GT 1030, it is indeed a good choice for a 4K HTPC. You can get low-profile passively cooled models with HDMI and DisplayPort.

However, you need Windows 10 to gain support for HDR displays. I feel that this and other issues reduce the benefits of 4K for Media Center use.

[StinkyImp]

DavidinCT created an interesting post on how he was able to run Windows Media Center @ 2160p/4K

[joelkirzner]

I've been using Alienware Alpha R1 HTPCs connected to my LG OLED 4K tvs for years.

That model runs a NVIDIA 865M dedicated graphics card and it can handle 4K @ 60hz with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, no problem. It has HDMII and Optical out, so it is 100% HDCP compliant with WMC content.

I use it primarily to watch Verizon FIOS tv via WMC. All other content from Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, is through the native TV apps... so I can get HDR, Dolby Vision, etc.