Hardware decoding would help if you're displaying the video on a large screen TV. For a regular monitor and a modern system like yours, software decoding is fine.

Then there's always the Radeon video card option with excellent hardware decoding built in.

------------------
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
--Arthur C. Clarke

PIII 800 | ASUS CUBX-E | 256MB CAS2 RAM | 30GB Quantum Fireball Plus AS | Leadtek WinFast GeForce256 32 MB DDR | Philips Rhythmic Edge | Pioneer 106S DVD-ROM | Acer Future Keyboard | MS Intellimouse Trackball | Windows 98 | ADSL