P233 + Radeon = Home Theater

[Auric]

I picked up a Radeon 7200 PCI on the cheap awhile ago for my mum's olde school P233MMX (upgraded via PowerLeap adapter from P166), Intel VX, 64MB, SB16 + AWE32, XP Pro.

Messing around, I played a 320x240 MPEG-1 clip full screen and was amazed at what an improvement the VPU made to performance -it was flawless. So I just had to try MPEG-4 and sure enough a good res DivX works great at full frame-rate with no drops in the renderer. I enabled all the quality options in DivX 5 but had to set the postprocessing (CPU slider quality) to minimum. Don't let anyone tell ya that video cards don't make a difference to movie quality or performance, even when not using MC or iDCT.

 

[Goi]

THe P233MMX's not gonna cut it for DVDs though, most people recommend at least a 500MHz P2-class processor, but I'd say that's the minimum requirements. Even my Celeron 850 stutters a bit when playing DVDs, so I'd recommend at least a 1GHz CPU. Your video card is good though.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Goi
THe P233MMX's not gonna cut it for DVDs though, most people recommend at least a 500MHz P2-class processor, but I'd say that's the minimum requirements. Even my Celeron 850 stutters a bit when playing DVDs, so I'd recommend at least a 1GHz CPU. Your video card is good though.

Well, seeing as DivX (high quality) is more hardware intensive than DVD playing, I think it *could* work on this machine. I really don't think that he's getting "no dropped frames" on a high quality DivX with a P233, considering I've seen DivX choppy on a ~P500 with a Voodoo3.

 

[Goi]

Well, seeing as DivX (high quality) is more hardware intensive than DVD playing, I think it *could* work on this machine. I really don't think that he's getting "no dropped frames" on a high quality DivX with a P233, considering I've seen DivX choppy on a ~P500 with a Voodoo3

Precisely...even my Celeron 850 with a Voodoo3 stutters when playing divx sometimes, so I'm pretty sure he's not getting "no dropped frames" either...depends on what you consider as "cutting it" i guess.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: Goi
THe P233MMX's not gonna cut it for DVDs though, most people recommend at least a 500MHz P2-class processor, but I'd say that's the minimum requirements. Even my Celeron 850 stutters a bit when playing DVDs, so I'd recommend at least a 1GHz CPU. Your video card is good though.

Now isn't it odd that the original post exactly contradicts you? It DOES work for him.

 

[Goi]

Yeah, for MPEG-1 and MPEG-4, I was talking about DVDs though.

 

[Peter]

Especially for DVD play, SiS and ATi graphics chips and integrated chipsets have had accelerator hardware for quite a while (SiS's dates back to 1997!). Pentium-233MMX combined with the ancient SiS 6326DVD graphics chip indeed does flawless DVD.

regards, Peter

 

[Auric]

Hey, what is to doubt? This is not subjective. The standard MS renderer filter includes stats for frame rate and frames dropped.

And yes, DVD MPEG-2 is less intensive than MPEG-4. Unfortunately the machine does not have a DVD drive. For laughs I may try a small movie VOB that will fit on CD or else bring my own DVD drive over. I wonder if playing from DVD uses more CPU cylces than from CD? But HW acceleration should negate that and make MPEG-2 even less CPU intensive.

My C450 with Savage4 was overkill for DVD and Radeon is even better -nevermind the added iDCT. The problem with Voodoo is those had really bad video scaling and of course even lacked MC.

Anyhoo, I though it was a nifty experiment and will not let the doubting Thomas's pee on my parade

 

[aircooled]

If you're happy with the results, then by all means keep it. Personally I feel like you need at least 800mhz with a decent vid card, but that's just me ;-)

If you are satisfied with it, enjoy it!