High CPU usage with ATI DVD player

[Engr62]

I have the following system:

- Asus P3V4X motherboard (only using the 2x AGP and not 4x)
- Intel P3 600 EB
- 256 Mb generic PC133 Dimms
- All-In-Wonder Radeon 32 Mb DDR AGP
---- Drivers = 7075
---- DVD software = ATI DVD player version 4.1
---- MMC software = version 7.1
- Maxtor 15 Mb & 20 Mb hard drives (both only 5400 RPM)
- Bus Link 16x DVD ROM
- Sound Blaster 16 PCI
- Windows 98 SE, DirectX 8.0

After having read an article on AnandTech regarding DVD performance here, I decided to check to see what my CPU usage was while playing a DVD (I did this because I wasnt' able to work on much without a slow down while a DVD was playing).

I used the system monitor application that came with Win98SE to check the CPU usage (this may not be the best program to check this, but it's all I had at the time). No other programs were running at the time of this test. Anyway, the system monitor application indicated that the CPU usage was between 35% and 40% while the DVD software was playing. In the article on AnandTech, the Radeon 64 Mb DDR only used between 10% and 17% of the CPU. They used a different player (WinDVD 2.2); however both the WinDVD and ATI players make use of the DVD hardware features of the Radeon chip (HWMC and iDCT).

Is there a possiblity that the ATI DVD player is not actually using the iDCT of the chip? What kind of CPU utilization are others getting?

Thanks.

 

[AA0]

yes, but they aren't using 600Mhz p3s for their test.

 

[Engr62]

Does the CPU speed have anything to do with CPU utilization if the whole purpose of HWMC and iDCT is to offload the work from the CPU to the video card?

 

[MemnochtheDevil]

Of course the CPU speed will have something to do with utilization. If it takes 15% to play a dvd on a 1.1 ghz Athlon with a certain video card, then if your using the same card on a 600 mhz machine your cpu should be ~27-30%. The video card is doing a lot of the processing necessary to play the dvd but it still needs some things to be done by the processor.

Also things like your IDE configuration can cause slowdowns when playing a dvd, look to see if you have problems when your hard drive is accessed. I used to be able to play CS on my 550 celeron while playing a dvd on the TV (using a hollywood decoder card), the only problems where when loading a new map.

Memnoch

 

[rbV5]

I think it may also be more related to your driver/mmc version. I used to run my AIW radeon on my 650 duron at almost half the CPU usage you report. I've never used win98se with my Radeon cards, but for XP MMC7.5 and driver 6025 were the best combination for me.

 

[Engr62]

Thanks for the replies.

I tried to download MMC 7.5 at one time, but the sites kept disappearing. What version of the DVD player was in MMC 7.5 (or was it even in the MMC 7.5 package)?