Minimum PC Requirements for DVD Rom

[pinnochio]

About to buy/try a DVD ROM Drive on one of my Pc's.
Knowing nothing, I have to ask. Is a 16mb nvidia
card enough? How about an 8mb card?
Does playing a DVD on Screen eat up memory? 128 here.
Does the cpu speed play into the equation? 600-750 okay??

Possibly retarded,
-P

 

[paparazi]

I remember when you had to have one of those DVD decoder cards but that was with pre 400 speed PC's with less than 16mb graphics .

I guess anything 400mhz plus with 16mb+ graphics and 64mb memory for W98 should be fine.

So yes Nvidia TNT2 or Vanta and 600-750 easy makes the grade.

Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[cdogg]

Most minimum requirements I've seen ask for at least a P-II 266MHz with 64MB RAM. Most don't mention the video card, as MPEG decoding is 100% CPU intensive.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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[kmcferrin]

I thought that most video cards produced nowdays had MPEG decoding built into the graphics chip (or at least accelerators)? I've got an old Geforce2 video card that had this functionality.

 

[ddvlad]

In my experience, I have seen a DVD-ROM work on a 350Mhz-Pentium II with 128 RAM and 8 megs of video. Though it worked fine for data DVDs, it might have had a problem with playing video.

 

[cdogg]

kmcferrin,
Unfortunately, that's not true in gaming cards. They focus on OpenGL and DirectX acceleration. Some of the VIVO versions (like the ATI All-In-Wonder) support MPEG encoding, and maybe that's what you were thinking of. However, none of these cards support realtime MPEG decoding.

For that, you would need a specialized decoder card or would have to use a higher-end workstation card. Because software decoding doesn't steal much from a fast CPU (over 500MHz), the need for hardware decoding isn't as important as it used to be.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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[garebo]

I remember the days of my P2-400 and a near-first edition dvdrom. They were hell, freezing all the time etc.
But one thing i found was then when i went back to this pc a year or so ago and installed newer versions of powerdvd or other software, then the dvd player worked much better. So i felt i had narrowed the problem down to the first dvd software being poorly written. I still have that P2-400 and it plays dvds just fine now. 256mb ram and 8 mb intel i740 video card (i think thats the name of the card).
But i also think i have a newer dvd player in it as well, so it could be a combination of newer software and newer dvd player. But i dont think a low mb vid card will be a problem. And when i say newer dvd player i mean only like 10x or better. The newer ones, i think, go up to what, 40x.
You dont need to have a new dvd player, just maybe not the first editon.
I bet your setup would be fine as long as you use software that isnt too old. You might want to add a bit of ram since its so cheap now, but it will likely work ok as is.
I may be all wrong here but i am only telling you what works for my old pc.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[cdogg]

Thanks garebo for your insight.


OK, I decided to get off my lazy bum and do some research! Turns out that everyone had some of it right.


First of all, what I said above holds true for most "gaming" video cards made before 2003, with the exception of a few like the ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro. This puppy has built-in hardware MPEG-2 decoding. Not all versions of the ATI AIW cards have this, so like I said, there are few exceptions.


Microsoft released this in late 2001:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,95624,src,ov,00.asp

Almost a year later, "Corona" officially became part of Media Player:

http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2002/0,4814,74849,00.html

So you can see how card manufacturers are starting to include codecs within the GPU's framework. Even with this addition, however, the overall reduction in CPU usage is still only about 10-20%. Higher quality cards from Matrox, for example, can go up as high as 50%. The point is that MPEG decoding will always stress the CPU to some extent, with or without a hardware decoder.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884