jerky DVD playback

[Rapamatic]

I made my little sister an inexpensive PC, mostly used for AIM and web surfing. I recently put a DVD drive in and have noticed that the video is very choppy. Here is the basic info about her system:

celeron 800
256 MB SDRAM
8mb Pine Tech video card (**I think this is the culprit**)
Toshiba 4X or 8X DVD-ROM (I forget the speed... canabilized from a 3 year old Dell)

Am I correct in assuming that upgrading to a better video card, maybe an ATI Expert2000 PRo 32MB, would make the full screen (1024x768) DVD playback smooth?

Thanks

 

[John]

Check to make sure DMA is enabled. Try WinDVD 3.xx or PowerDVD 4.0. The ATI card will do wonders for that system.

 

[Rapamatic]

I'm running PowerDVD, and it enabled DMA on the DVD drive.

I'm leaning toward putting that ATI card in hew box.

 

[DieHardware]

The ATI card will give you great DVD playback, but FWIW Cinemaster 99 plays DVDs smoothly on my Celeron366/Intel SE440/Matrox Millenium II 8MB setup.

 

[Rapamatic]

Its also running win2k sp2... could that be affecting performance?

Is PowerDVD not a good player to use?

 

[zsouthboy]

If youre using powerdvd 2.55 like I am, it doesn't detect a hardware accelerator in win 2k. try downloading a trial version of powerdvd 4 from their website and see if it improves.

In actuality, a 350 is all you need for dvd, so even with a crappy vid card, you should be able to play just fine. Even though it's already been said, make absolute sure that DMA is enabled, and download the latest IDE drivers for your mobo.

Even though the ATi might help(it'll let like a 233 run a full screen dvd with no dropped frames), I'm thinking that for some reason DMA is still not enabled.

zs

 

[Rapamatic]

DMA is enabled, but I am only running PowerDVD 3.0. Do you know if that detects a hardware accelerator in win2k?

Also, what mode is ideal for a CD burner, PIO or DMA?