new PCI graphics card in slower machine to play movies

[pptvictor]

Hi,

I have an old K6 machine, i think it runs at about 400Mhz... I want to make a HTPC out of it. In the current configuration, it does not decode movies very well - it's a bit laggy/choppy. The cheapest solution i can think of is to buy a new PCI graphics card to stick into it. Will this improve the playback of my movies? or is the video decoding all done in the CPU (meaning that i will need a new computer)?

Cheers

Vic.

 

[temporello]

u will need a new computer (anyway)

 

[paparazi]

jsrvictor
DVD PCI decoder cards can be picked up for a few dollars/pounds from places like ebay: LOOK!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Creative-Enco...5237027939QQcategoryZ3762QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CineMaster-C-...798624774QQcategoryZ90710QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DVD-Decoder-C...5236504874QQcategoryZ3762QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Martin

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

 

[felixc]

A Radeon 9250 PCI would probably be sufficient for your machine to play videos. I was able to play movies with a K6-550 and an old Rage128 card.

But if you can get a working hardware DVD decoder (with software that matches your OS ) on Ebay, that's quite a deal.

 

[pptvictor]

Thanks for the responses guys

i want to play divx, xvid etc and not just dvds. is that what you mean when you say yours could play videos?

I am going to steal some older pci video cards from work and see how it goes. I have no idea what type of old video cards they are......

cheers

vic

 

[paparazi]

Really needs to be 8mb plus to work well.
ATI Rage chip
Vanta, TNT nvidia
Matrox G200 etc
or better
The cheapest NEW cards would be a Radeon 7000 series
or an MX4000 Nvidia in PCI
Martin



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Participate and help others.

 

[cdogg]

Also it's worth noting that most older graphics cards do not have MPEG-2 decoding built into the hardware instruction, meaning it won't help DVD playback. Also in older systems, AVI and MPEG playback relied more on the CPU than the video card.

So unless you throw in a modern card, you might not notice much difference. Worth a shot though!

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

Cheers guys

I will see if i can find a newer card... maybe some shop will let me buy one and let me return it if it doesnt help me. Also, I'm yet to try out an old matrox card which has mpeg2 decoding built in, but I'm not sure whether it has 4 or 8 megs of memory...

I'll keep you posted.

vic