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DVD decoder card. Is it necessary?

shiner

shiner

Lifer
I'm builing a PIII 1 gigahertz system for a friend and he wants to put a DVD drive in it. Since I've never messed with DVD PC drives I have no clue about them and was wondering if buying a bare OEM DVD drive is ok and will work for him or if it's necessary to get the kit that includes the decoder card?

Any help or recommendations about drives, cards, etc... would be very helpful.

Thanks!!!
 
What kind of video card is going in it? Most ATI cards have a built in decoder already, and the nVidia cards usually play them pretty well with no hardware card. Put a Radeon in and you won't have to worry at all.
 
With 1GHz you don't need a decoder card with any video card. Anyways, the Radeon and GeForce-based cards all have some degree of decode assist built in. The Radeon has IDCT and motion compensation on-chip and the GeForce has motion compensation, so skip the decoder card unless he wants TV-out and the video card he picks doesn't have that feature.
 
I think you need at least a 4meg video card, but under most circumstances recent software players play BETTER without Hardware decoding!
 
get powerdvd. it looks better than my decoder card (creative dxr3). on a 1ghz software decoding will probably take only 20-30% cpu time.
 
Well...he went ahead and ordered a 16x Pioneer DVD ROM without a decoder card. Now my question is this....his Radeon came in today and I was looking at it and it's the LE version and from what I can find on the net the LE doesn't have the same capabilities as the normal Radeon. Did he screw up in buying this or will he still be ok? I don't hink he's interested in buying a software dcoder package either. Is he making a stupid mistake or what?

Thanks for the help.....I"m really clueless about DVD drives.
 
I personally didnt like my Radeon for DVD or WinTV.. it seemed washed out on WinTV and DVD compatibility problems out the Yang.. I got my Geforce and all is well.. I have used Power DVD with many video cards, most NVIDIA and Matrox, and it works great with no decoder..
 
I've got Athlon 700MHz and a Voodoo3 3000 vid card.

My Toshiba 12x DVD drive runs FINE without the DVD decoder card! I use PowerDVD and NO PROBLEMS AT ALL!

 
I used to use a Creative 12x with its DXR3 decoder. After I discovered that my GEForce was doing the job fine, I took the card out of my rig. For a P3 1 gig processor, you dont really need a decoder, but if you buy a Radeon or a GeForce2 to go with the system, it will be all you need.

Go with the Pioneer 16x slot loading drive and Power DVD 3.0 software.
 
Cool, I was wondering the EXACT same thing. So in essence, hardware decoding is useless with a powerful cpu? I'm running a classic k7 with a dxr3. I'm curious as to whether I should ditch the decoder since the less PCI's I use the happier I am. Tx.

Kev
 
I'm using a Geforce 2MX with TVout on a K7 1ghz and no decoder card.
It works great with only the cheap, free software DVD decoder the DVD Rom came with.
I bought an OEM 16x Pioneer ~ $120 Can.
 
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