Poor DVD performance!

[Guest_imported]

I would really appreciate it if someone could identify the bottleneck in my system. My hardware is a P3 733mhz, 256 MB SDRAM, Gainward Cardexpert Geforce 2 pro/450 with 64Mb DDR memory, and a motherboard which only supports 2X AGP. All of these are my specs which I feel are relevant to my PC's DVD playback. I recently bought the graphics card mentioned above in order to solve my DVD problems. I am, however, disappointed to discover that my DVD playback is still a little jerky. Surely my PC is fast enough to run DVD's efficiently? Where is my bottleneck? Is it all because of my 2X AGP?

 

[stuartd]

Check the properties of the DVD drive in the device manager - win98 and above has a tick box option to enable DMA - ensure this is checked.

 

[xscape]

Yeh, I agree with what stuartd said. But it's also important to remember that the software you use to play it make A LOT of difference. Eg I tried Intervideo WinDVD and found it appalling! It was really, really bad. I installed Mediamatics which is pretty basic an a couple of years old now but it's way better. It's still not totally smooth and you can recognise some very small amount of skip and that's on an Athlon 1Ghz, 380Mb Ram, and GeForce 2MX 32Mb (6 speed drive though that's getting on a bit now).

One I think I remember seeing on a friends machine was PowerDVD which looked superb. I'm gonna install that as soon as I can get it off him!

Hope that's helpful!

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks for the replies so far! My DMA box is checked and I am using WINDVD. I tried PowerDVD but actually found the performance to be the same, although I found WINDVD to be more user friendly which is why I am using it. Just to assist anyone further who might want to give me some pointers is that I have a 16X Acer DVD drive. I have not installed any specific drivers for my DVD drive, as there were none that came with it. Does a DVD drive require specific drivers to take advantage of its speed, or does windows simply detect the drive as a DVD drive and uses it to its full speed automatically? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Jakespeare]

Hi Jason.
In response to your last post:

I have used about all of the DVD software, for trial purposes, and I found InterVideo WinDVD the best. Better even than ATI's good program. ( I now run WinDVD 3.0 Pro with my GF3, and it's as good as it gets)

For Win98 you do not need to load any drivers for a CD-ROM device......... your OK there.

Your system should run DVD perfectly, and I mean flawlessly.

> My guess is, the drivers for the video system are not set up properly.

To save having to post 2x the information, I'm going to wait on an answer to this question ?

What is the mainboard you have ?
> Manufacturer
> Model
The reason I need to know this is, to find out what chipset your using.

(To be short here)
If it's VIA, you need to have the VIA AGP setup, not just the Windows default VIA drivers loaded; that will seriously
compromise your video performance.

I would recommend,,,,, using the VIA 4in1 version 4.35.

For both (or all configurations) .......
> Install DirectX8.1 from Microsoft
> NVIDIA drivers update,,,, you can't use the old junk that comes with the video card,,,,,,, nor the mainboard.
You have to get updated software for your hardware.

If you do not have the AGP drivers working properly,
you will have some real performance issues.

> A suggestion would be....... download the 3DMark 2000 and run that, see how it performs. 2800 ? 3000 ? 3500 ?
etc........

Anyway..... I'll wait. If it's an Intel chipset based
board, I have the Intel info handy and will post.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks Jakespeare, it sounds like you might have a point. I have never installed any drivers specific to my motherboard and so I am sure Windows is in fact using the default drivers. My motherboard is made by Gigabyte, but I am not sure as to the exact model. I will have a look later when I go home and then I will post what model it is! Where can I download those VIA AGP drivers? I have in fact got 3DMark 2000 and was actually very impressed with it's score. Before I had a Riva TNT2 and it scored about 1200 points, but with the new Geforce2 pro, it scored about 4900. Almost as much as a Geforce3! Anyway, thank you for your help, I'll get find out my motherboard model ASAP.

 

[teknikal]

Assuming you have the VIA chipset, you'll want to install the latest drivers which you can find at:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/support/support.htm

Make sure you end up installing the 4-in-1 drivers which are specifically designed for your AGP videocard. It seems to be the root of your problem.

G/L!

 

[neomagic]

Jason,
If your still having problems after all that try another angle....SOUND CARD drivers, everybody forgets about the sound card. The DVD audio has to be decoded by the software CODEC also. Huge chunks out of processor threads! If you have a chee...inexpensive audio card you can prob. bet that performace is going to suffer, and lord help you from what I hear if your running AMR audio. I had problems with DirectX 8.0 because Creative didn't have DX 8.0 drivers let alone WHQL cerfified ones and had to re-load Win98se to get back to DX 7.0 which SB had drivers for. I solved all my performanc problems when Microsoft released a real o/s...XP. All my equipment is High end and I never got the performance and stability that I got when I loaded XP. GL

 

[Guest_imported]

I downloaded the VIA 4 in 1 drivers and they solved all of my problems. My DVD playback is finally flawless. I really want to thank everyone who tried to help me with my problem! Especially Jakespeare who first told me to install the VIA chipset drivers. Thank you again!