DVD Drive choppy - What to do?

[Limey6413]

Hi,
I just put together a system for a friend. Basically, it's a Duron 600 on some kind of Motherboard with built in video. Up to 16 Megs of RAM can be shared from the main memory to be used for the video. The DVD's play, but they are kinda choppy and the sound echos once in a while. It only has one 64MB Dimm in it, is this the problem or is there something else? I would appreciate any help you guys might have. Thanks in advance,
Limey

 

[rsilva28]

I would try adding more memory and see if that helps. If not then install a better video card. Try that and see what happens.

 

[Dee67]

do you have DMA enabled on the drive?

 

[Limey6413]

Yeah DMA is on

 

[Petro89]

A Duron 600 should be plenty powerful enough to play DVDs, even with only 64 Megs. I have a feeling that the problem is the video card. Either your DVD software isn't optimized for use with that vid card, or it is just too slow altogether.

Another 64 megs may help a tiny bit, but probably not too much. I'd invest in a DVD decoder card. It doesn't even have to be the latest and greatest card. I have a Creative DXR2 card that plays DVDs absolutely flawlessly on a lowly Pentium 166MMX with only 48 MB ram. And that's on an old 2X DVD drive! You can get a DXR2 for $20-30. However, you will need the proper connection from the vid card to the decoder card (I think it's called DVI), and I'm not sure if many built-in video cards have that connection on the motherboard.

Good luck!

 

[Maetryx]

Maetryx here,

I used to have the dxr2 card from Creative Labs as well, and I didn't need any internal video cables for it. You need to pass an audio cable to your sound card, but on mine, I had an external VGA patch cable about 6 inches long. So your monitor plugs into the dxr2 card, and your dxr2 card plugs into the video card via the external VGA patch cable.

Mon:----------------xr2:---:vga connector on mobo

Like that. So the dxr2 card has *two* VGA ports on it. Like the old VooDoo2 cards. In fact, I used to connect mine like this.

Mon:--------------xr2:---:VooDoo2:---:Matrox G200

with 2 little VGA pass through cables.

--Maetryx

 

[The Stigenator]

try powerdvd .. that should do the trick.

use 16MB for video.. nothing lesser.

 

[stingbandel]

I think the problem is the video card. I don't think you need a decoder card cause like someone said on the top that Duron is pretty good enough. Try to get a video card and see the different. If it's still not working then return it and get a decoder card.

Darno

 

[Cybrwolf]

Almost all onboard video chips are only good for reading email, get a real video card and your movies will rock. Check the "Hot Deals" forum lots of great vid cards are very cheap now.