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HD x DVDROM
- Thread starter supercoil
- Start date
What is your system configuration (CPU, Video Card, DVD software, DVD hardware, RAM, OS, etc)?
It's most likely due to the "software" rendering process. If you don't use a hardware decoder card, then playing a DVD can require a lot of CPU time on slower systems.
![[deejay]](/data/assets/smilies/deejay.gif "[deejay] [deejay]")
ck_blk@yahoo.com
It's most likely due to the "software" rendering process. If you don't use a hardware decoder card, then playing a DVD can require a lot of CPU time on slower systems.
ck_blk@yahoo.com
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CitrixEngineer
Technical User
I think you mean Pentium 4 @ 2.2Ghz!
That setup should run DVD's just fine. The hard disk activity is just Windows swapping stuff in and out of the page file and is normal.
If it seems excessive to the point that it actually slows your system down or causes glitches whilst watchin DVDs, then there are a couple of things you could try;
1. Check your disks are all using DMA. There should be a setting on the disk controller in Device Manager.
2. Manually set the swap file limits. This is not usually required in Windows XP, but it may help to set it so that the min and max is 1.5x the amount of RAM you have.
3. Check that the DVD is not sharing the same IDE ribbon cable as the HDD.
Hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
That setup should run DVD's just fine. The hard disk activity is just Windows swapping stuff in and out of the page file and is normal.
If it seems excessive to the point that it actually slows your system down or causes glitches whilst watchin DVDs, then there are a couple of things you could try;
1. Check your disks are all using DMA. There should be a setting on the disk controller in Device Manager.
2. Manually set the swap file limits. This is not usually required in Windows XP, but it may help to set it so that the min and max is 1.5x the amount of RAM you have.
3. Check that the DVD is not sharing the same IDE ribbon cable as the HDD.
Hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
Definitely sounds like DMA is the problem...
To elaborate just a little, make sure you go to the "Primary IDE Controller" in Device Manager to find the DMA settings under "Advanced Settings".
As far as the swap file goes, you shouldn't need to rely on the formula 1.5 times the amount of RAM (or 2.5x as others recommend). That system went way back to the days of 8MB and 16MB of RAM. It hardly applies in todays system (with more than 128MB), unless you're configuring a server.
With 512MB of RAM, I wouldn't waste more than 256MB for the swap file. At the very most, assign 512MB to the task. Anything more will probably never get used. ~cdogg
"We park in driveways but drive in parkways?"
To elaborate just a little, make sure you go to the "Primary IDE Controller" in Device Manager to find the DMA settings under "Advanced Settings".
As far as the swap file goes, you shouldn't need to rely on the formula 1.5 times the amount of RAM (or 2.5x as others recommend). That system went way back to the days of 8MB and 16MB of RAM. It hardly applies in todays system (with more than 128MB), unless you're configuring a server.
With 512MB of RAM, I wouldn't waste more than 256MB for the swap file. At the very most, assign 512MB to the task. Anything more will probably never get used. ~cdogg
"We park in driveways but drive in parkways?"
CitrixEngineer
Technical User
cdogg - the reason I gave the admittedly vague 1.5xRAM figure is that even with XP, if some kind of bottleneck occurs, or vast amounts of data are being shifted around (such as DVD chapters), then it is possible that a large portion of RAM is used. Windows always tries to swap out as much of the RAM contents as possible and will return "Out of Memory" errors if there is no swap space available. There's a marathon thread on this somewhere on this forum...
It depends entirely on what the system is being used for. YMMV.
Safest option IMO is to have a bit more swap than RAM (system processes are always swapped); 1Gb is barely 2% of most hard drives! CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
It depends entirely on what the system is being used for. YMMV.
Safest option IMO is to have a bit more swap than RAM (system processes are always swapped); 1Gb is barely 2% of most hard drives! CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
"1Gb is barely 2% of most hard drives!"
Guess I'm way behind the times with a 20GB drive!! LOL That's pushing it a bit I think, but I see your point. In the past, I too have always recommended the swap file to be larger than the amount of RAM for the same reasons you touched on. But in operating systems like Win2K and Win98SE, I have the swap file set right at 192MB with 384MB in the system. Never had a problem and I do some serious video and music editing that definitely eats RAM and resources.
Perhaps I've been lucky? Perhaps WinXP is different in how it handles the paging file? Who knows? Whoever reads any posts in this forum should take the advice here lightly with a grain of salt.![[thumbsup2]](/data/assets/smilies/thumbsup2.gif "[thumbsup2] [thumbsup2]")
~cdogg
"We park in driveways but drive in parkways?"
Guess I'm way behind the times with a 20GB drive!! LOL That's pushing it a bit I think, but I see your point. In the past, I too have always recommended the swap file to be larger than the amount of RAM for the same reasons you touched on. But in operating systems like Win2K and Win98SE, I have the swap file set right at 192MB with 384MB in the system. Never had a problem and I do some serious video and music editing that definitely eats RAM and resources.
Perhaps I've been lucky? Perhaps WinXP is different in how it handles the paging file? Who knows? Whoever reads any posts in this forum should take the advice here lightly with a grain of salt.
~cdogg"We park in driveways but drive in parkways?"
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