DVD playback with a Voodoo3/K6-2 system

Athlex

Golden Member
Jun 17, 2000
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A friend of mine is upgrading his system and looking to buy a DVD drive. He's running a Voodoo3 3000 on a K6-2 500MHz system. Would he be able to get good fullscreen playback without a dedicated decoder card?
 

Willoughbyva

Diamond Member
Sep 26, 2001
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I used to have a similar system and it would do it. I forgot what software decoder I was using at the time I think Power DVD, but I can't quite remember. He might not be able to to play at real high resolutions, but I can't really remember now.
My old system was K6/2 500 128megs of ram, Voodoo 2000, 20gig 7200rpm drive. 19" monitor.

He should be OK.

Will
 

bsr

Senior member
May 28, 2002
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The cpu will run it fine, but the some dvd's might not play very smooth on action scenes becuase of video card. Maybe he should use PowerDVD it will run alittle bit smoother. If power dvd runs to slow on it then winDVD will do the trick.
 

Mday

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
18,646
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the video card will do jack to help with dvd playback. it's hardware assist will prolly offer some 5% improvement.

anyway, he should be able to run it full screen, depending on resolution.

what operating system is he using, and how much RAM?
 

Peter007

Platinum Member
May 8, 2001
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on My AMD K6-2 333mhz. I don't need a Decoder Card.

it play Smooth DVD with with ATI Graphic Card, and Power DVD which has 3D NOW Support

Running the most intense scene on my ATI rage128 is around 75% - 89% cpu usage.
On the entire movie as a whole, it hovers around $25% - $50%.

However, on NONE-ATI Graphic cad like Savage S3, I got 100% cpu usage with choppy frame rate

In short, CPU is good enough - but is your Graphic Card good enough

ATI has the best hardware Motion Compensation that cuts down the CPU requirement.
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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The ATi cards (and the SiS ones) assist the DVD decoding in two stages - motion compensation and iDCT. That's why these, and only these, allow DVD replay on as low as Pentium MMX 233 MHz.

regards, Peter
 

Athlex

Golden Member
Jun 17, 2000
1,258
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Mday,
Windows 2000
128 MB PC100

Sounds like the Voodoo3 predates motion compensation and iDCT, huh?
 

RobsTV

Platinum Member
Feb 11, 2000
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I had best results using K6-2 300 with V3 when I used ATI DVD Player 3.1.
Even though it's a 3dfx card, the ATI 3.1 software worked like a champ with it.
Tried all the other software including the included WinDVD and as well as PowerDVD. ATI 3.1 player worked the best.
As much as I hated the V3 in the end, it did have good DVD playback using it's TV out.