What's the slowest CPU you ran and were still able to get smooth, full-screen DVD playback with ATI Card?

snort1

Junior Member
Jul 14, 2002
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My sister needs a computer. I have spare parts (Old ZX Board and socket 370 Celeron-366) but only a 3dfx card. She wants internet, games, and DVD.
 

Deeko

Lifer
Jun 16, 2000
30,213
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81
My old skool AMD K6-2 350 ran DVD's ok in software...not great though. I'd imagine the cely is the same. But, ATI cards are hardware, so if you drop one of those in, it will be fine.
 

Green Man

Golden Member
Jan 21, 2001
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Until recently, my daughters computer was a cel366 128MB with a 4mb PCI vid card. Ran full screen DVDs fine on a hollywood plus decoder.
 

snort1

Junior Member
Jul 14, 2002
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Yeah the Hollywood is amazing. I have it installed on the computer at work (Pentium 233). I slowed it down to 120 MHZ - 30 mhz bus and it ran the whole Alien Trilogy without a hitch. Sitting through Alien 4 was the only trouble I had.
Anyway I don't want to go the 2 card route and was hoping a Radeon 7000 might run the DVD. Hoping
 

Duvie

Elite Member
Feb 5, 2001
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My amd k62-400 needed a hardware decoder card, but my athlon 750tbird was the first system I had with a dvd-rom and an ATI card...I was able to dump mpeg decoder card.

That celeron may be pushing it....go ahead and keep the 3dfx card (which I also used with my k62-400) and get a mpeg decoder card for 10-20 bucks in the forums....It likely will have nice svideo out incase she wants to send it to a TV or audio to a stereo receiver...
 

dfloyd

Senior member
Nov 7, 2000
978
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Celeron 300 / Voodoo III 3000

Ran perfect for me, no slowdowns at all. I think I had 64mb of ram in that system.
 

snort1

Junior Member
Jul 14, 2002
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I have it up in running. It seems to run well. Couple episodes of the Mash DVD ran with a little pause when I moved the mouse. Maybe some DVD's players are much better than others. My old DVD player would not run on PIII-733. This Samsungs running with the Voodoo III-3000 AGP, 64MB Ram, and the Celery-366.
 

Priit

Golden Member
Nov 2, 2000
1,337
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ATI himself says P2/233 with Rage Pro or P200MMX with Rage128 or newer to be sufficent...
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,048
1,679
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Mine ran fine: Celeron 366 with ATI Rage Pro. I believe my Voodoo 3 3000 was also sufficient even though it had no hardware assist. However, with the Voodoo I basically couldn't do ANYTHING else.
 

Auric

Diamond Member
Oct 11, 1999
9,591
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Snort1 that should be fine with a Rage128 Pro or Radeon256 chip. 3dfx had the worst video scaling and quality of any mainstream card at the time, plus no significant hardware acceleration. My mum's P233 and Radeon PCI does well with MPEG-4 which is more intensive so that speaks to the regular video acceleration features. Unfortunately, AGP is required for MPEG-2 acceleration. I personally used a C300A@450 with a Savage4 which was great but the Radeon is even better with iDCT in addition to MC.
 

tRaptor

Golden Member
Jul 31, 2002
1,227
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Yeah the HollyWood is GREAT.

I got bored one day so i put mine in a Pentium 166, with a 5X dvd drive and 32 MB ram. It worked like a charm.
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
9,640
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The Radeon and SiS cards have the iDCT math stage of DVD decoding in hardware too. Thanks to this, CPU power can be VERY low - SiS back then (in 1998) claimed smooth DVD playback on 233 MHz Pentiums.

Today, when advanced sound cards eat quite a bit of CPU power for six-channel decoding and the likes, you might want some headroom ... but a Celeron-366 should cut it when given an ATi or SiS graphics card.
 

RobsTV

Platinum Member
Feb 11, 2000
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Originally posted by: Dunjon
Did you use ATI's dvd player?

Using ATI DVD player 3.1 along with K6-2 350, 3dfx Voodoo3, and 64 meg ram worked perfectly together.
No seperate decoder card needed, and even though using ATI player, no ATI card needed.