CPU for Divx decoding?

[skypilot]

I have a Pentium 200 that I use as a mp3 rig right now, I was wondering if it would suffice for Divx playing also? I want to make it into a full fledged home theater PC setup... If not what is the lowest recomended processor for a divx box?

 

[JackBurton]

NO! You'll need at least an 800MHz CPU for quality DivX movies.

 

[EKAtBzboyz]

id get a duron 800mhz-1000mhz just to be sure

 

[kingbob]

A 200MHz proc would choke on DivX, like Jack said, get an 800MHz at least.

 

[boran]

if in dire need, anything from a PIII onwards could do it .. (so a PIII 450 would be able to playback divX but dont expect it to do this with anything else running in the background ..)

 

[ElFenix]

i run divx fine on a p3 700 with 512 ram...

 

[PCMarine]

I agree

I used to play divx movies on a Dell Laptop - P3 500 w/ 128 mb Ram hooked up to an LCD Projector (Tight as hell!) and it was play relatively smooth, but it would choke and skip occassionally.

 

[Duvie]

For the plain cost do not even look at a duron...the 1600+ amd xp is the best value. It also has 256kb of l2 cache unlike the duron and celeron that are neutered.

I played divx of high quality on amd k62-400 and it had trouble...Coould not run it off of the cd took to o much cpu power....On my p3 600 laptop it played fine but took about everything it had....

If you like to multitask and do not want to be on the brink of performance playback issue look at minimum 1ghz...


My Divx movies now are pretty high quality and higher then my old systems played so trust me get the power why the power is cheap. Heck with a 1600+ you can even encode them yourself without too much time invested. I could encode at my quality just the video 2 pass gknot for a 2 hour runtime movie in about 4 hours with a 1600+...I do it now right about at 2hours and 20 minutes.

 

[smp]

Originally posted by: Duvie
For the plain cost do not even look at a duron...the 1600+ amd xp is the best value. It also has 256kb of l2 cache unlike the duron and celeron that are neutered. I played divx of high quality on amd k62-400 and it had trouble...Coould not run it off of the cd took to o much cpu power....On my p3 600 laptop it played fine but took about everything it had.... If you like to multitask and do not want to be on the brink of performance playback issue look at minimum 1ghz... My Divx movies now are pretty high quality and higher then my old systems played so trust me get the power why the power is cheap. Heck with a 1600+ you can even encode them yourself without too much time invested. I could encode at my quality just the video 2 pass gknot for a 2 hour runtime movie in about 4 hours with a 1600+...I do it now right about at 2hours and 20 minutes.

yeah, a 1600 is cheap .. so is a socket a board, an ATX psu, an ATX case, oh yeah .. and new ram ..
You're gonna have to upgrade everything man, cause nothing in your form factor is gonna cut it. I'de get a ~ 800 duron off of FS/FT and a good KT133a board, some SDRAM and that's that.

 

[FrustratedUser]

200MHz is not gonna work OK.
I use a 500MHz Celeron and it's on the limit for liquid smooth play, but it works good enough.

 

[Pink0]

lol my old P233mmx can't even play DVD at more than 3 fps without a decoder card let alone divx. Dream on!

 

[Mavrick]

My P200@225 MMX was able to play divx, but at a maximum resolution of 480x320 And sometimes, it would get a little choppy...) For silk smooth DVD quality DivX, you'll have to get a pentium III/Athlon.

 

[FishTankX]

Actually, to play DivX smoothly, a Pentium200 will suffice *IF* you get one of the new decoder card. Unfortunatley, one of these puppies runs ~90$. The good thing, is that it will decode MPEG-2 for you too, so it's like a combo MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoder card.

Go to toms as he covers it in one of his articles. It might be significantly cheaper (And I know a hell of alot more "Headache saving") than getting a new motherboard and processor and RAM. If you're lookig for a system upgrade, do a system upgrade.

If you actually want to keep this system in it's present form, you'll definatley need the Sigma designs decoder. And i'd highly reccomend it. It's a nice card.

 

[nortexoid]

even on my duron 1.1ghz w/ 256mb pc2100 on an nforce, my high bitrate divx movies at full screen get choppy....who'd a thought.

i'd say something like a retail athlon 1700+ would be your best bang/buck right now...and it's guaranteed to be fluid.

 

[smp]

Originally posted by: nortexoid
even on my duron 1.1ghz w/ 256mb pc2100 on an nforce, my high bitrate divx movies at full screen get choppy....who'd a thought. i'd say something like a retail athlon 1700+ would be your best bang/buck right now...and it's guaranteed to be fluid.

Are you serious?!! :Q

 

[Tbirdkid]

Im running divx on my lappy and it is a p3 650 with 256 megs of ram and a ton of device drivers... you can do it above 500 mhz i would say

 

[MadRat]

The front-side bus comes into play at some point. The Duron, being 100fsb, is severely limited in today's computing world. The old Celerons on 66fsb are absolutely pathetic for ripping and encoding. My suggestion is that you go for the 133fsb or better (166fsb+) and you'll immediately see results.

 

[Rankor]

It is possible to run Divx with a P200MMX.

Ran it with 64MB of RAM on a Hercules Dynamite 128 2MB video card on Windows 98SE at 320x240 (w/c is so-so quality).

Nothing should be running in the background.


Try it out on your system. If it chugs, then you'll need more oooomph in that system w/c could possibly warrant a proc/system board/RAM update.

 

[MadRat]

Alot of P200MMX's would tolerate 250MHz @100fsb if you have a 100fsb setting on the mainboard. Sure the processor is locked, but the lock is only on higher settings. You can set alot of the lower clock multipliers on them without a problem. Some are disabled, but its fun to expiriment.

 

[yhdd]

dude...what are u guys smoking....i gottta P2-233 that plays DiVx no problem full screen

 

[MadRat]

Dude, we're talking high definition Dvix, not the crap VCD stuff.

 

[Ronstang]

I built a Divx box soley for the purpose of playing high definition Divx movies on my TV at the lake house since I have no TV. The box consists of a P3 450, Radeon 7200 32 meg card with TV-Out and 256 megs of Ram, and a DVD drive in an old Acer case. Everything was laying around in boxes except the video card which was the only item I purchased. It plays every Divx movie I throw at it right off the CDs with no problems whatsoever.

 

[skriefal]

Have you tried using the ffdshow filter/codec to play back the files? It's supposed to be a bit faster than Divx's own software.