Running divx movie on pc

[Penfold]

I have some movies in the format of dix.avi. but when I play them they are very slow and it seems like the computer cannot cope with the job. the movies keep stopping and starting. this is only happening with my desktop pc, I have a laptop which has a lower spec but plays the movies without any problems. Can anyone help? below are the the specs of both computers:-

Desktop (wont play movies properly)
amd 550 athlon
196mb ram
4.3gb harddrive
4mb agp matrox graphics card
external modem
128 creative sound card
24x cd rom
32x sony cd-rw

Laptop, Toshiba (will play perfectly)
amd 475mhz
64mb ram
4.3gb harddrive
4mb agp graphics card
internal modem
built in sound card
24x cd rom

can someone please give me some idea of what the problem may be?

Thanks

Shaun Sheppard
shaun.sheppard@btinternet.com

 

[Karl Blessing]

heres a pretty good idea (DivX = Mpeg4)

Take a look at this diagram I put together just quick

http://www.kb244.com/mpeg4.htm

as you can see, hardware requirement to even play Mpeg 4 is high, which is generally a 750Mhtz to run smoothly.

The problem is simple, your computer is not powerful enough. Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[Karl Blessing]

whoa backup here, I just read the difference between your desktop and laptop Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[Karl Blessing]

you have the same ammount of data loaded on both machines, or is the desktop cluttered with programs that poped up during startup, both the same OS, etc, is the laptop a AMD K6-2, do both have the exact same DivX codec? Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[Penfold]

Both machines have just been restarted and so are not cluttered with programs. The only other difference I forgot to mention was that my desktop has windows 2000 on it.

 

[Karl Blessing]

hmm, that *might* be it, but I run Win2k as well , only difference is, I am running an AMD Tbird 1Ghtz with 384 meg rams, and I ripp DVDs for a hobby.

if its pro, I dont see too much problem, now if you are using Win2k Server (though I doubt) the problem could be that Server is more dedicated to background services than it is foreground.

furthermore I think Win2k in itself can be a bit demanding on the CPU power, and may not have enough (bandwidth?) to give upto the process of playing a DiviX (possible).

Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[Penfold]

So would you suggest upgrading the processor? my girlfriend is running practically the same settup as me but her computer is an AMD 800, and it works fine on hers. Is the 250mhz difference between the two computers the problem then?

Would u recomend maybe installing windows 98 on a different harddrive and see how the movie play from there, at least that would give me some idea of what is happening.

 

[Karl Blessing]

yes I think it's possibly the cpu usage ballance between the OS and the movie process, this is just my wild guess anyways.

but with your 550 , windows 2000 probally takes up most of your CPU's energy to execute itself, as a result, your DivX playback might stop/start, jitter , etc trying to get the cpu usage it needs, while waiting on windows to finish its internal task.

with the 800 (I had a duron 800 about a week ago) , I belive , the OS probally has enough CPU usage, therefore there is enough to dedicate to DivX, just having that extra boost, it may run fine on a win98 machine with a 475Mhtz processor, because since it's a laptop, it's been engineered to consume less power, also win98 more than likely consumes less CPU usage, therefore more is availible for DivX, I think it might help me a bit if I got a more detailed specification between the two machine(possibly even the specs of your gf's) I know you gave a pretty good length one up there, but might help to know the motherboard type, ram types, how much powersupply wattage you have, etc.

but generally, if you are just relating it to desktop pcs (your laptop excluded) , a faster processor would seem to help, if you include the scenario of your laptop, a less power hungry OS would help.

if you are interested in upgrading anywas, I may be able to help on figuring a much more decent system, depending on how much you want to pay (just replacing the CPU with another Athlon 'classic' might be good enough) Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[Karl Blessing]

just remeber the more comparism you have, the better chance you have at understanding the problem, heres a prime example.

take these three configurations

AMD Tbird 1Ghtz/384Meg Ram/ ATA100 7200RPM 60G HDD (what I have now) Win2k , divix appear to run just fine, though not too much increase in encoding speed it seems.

AMD Duron 800/384Meg Ram/ ATA/66 5400RPM 60G HDD (before I burned my duron) Win2k
the divix too appeared fine on here, though when fast forwarding you'd get a slight pausing on the picture for a couple seconds, then the video would resume normal speed

AMD Athlon Classic 750/512meg rams (I had 4 dimms with the slota board)/13G & 10G , Win98 , Divix Seemed to run fine on this, might be a couple jitter if I was doing something in the back ground, and I didnt try to encode on this processor.

my work's laptop - Celeron 400, 128Meg Rams, 6.4G hdd, divix seems to play like an old movie (it's not smooth, you get sort of a decent frame by frame view, but you still notice that it's taking its time, thou the movie is watchible)

I think I can explain why I had problem, and why not.

AMD Tbird 1Ghtz - Aside from having a faster harddrive for access to the file, the 1Ghtz is fast, and has full 256K cache on-die, so memory transfer to the chip isnt slowed down.

AMD Duron 800 - same reason as above (on-die cache) except with 200Mhtz less, and only have 64K Cache on die, the duron may have a bit troble catching upto a Tbird

AMD Athlon 750 - asside from having smaller harddrive in general, the Athlon Classic has off-die L2 cache, basically meaning that the cache is on a seperate chip on the PCB, the problem with this? ondie cache runs at 100% of the speed of the processor, but off-die with an Athlon runs at 1/2 the speed, so the difference between a 1Ghtz Athlon and a 1Ghtz Tbird, is about 500Mhtz of cache access speed.

Celeron 400 - well other than being a cellery 400 with about 64K ondie cache (with L1 cache duplicated into the L2) , it's my work's machine, what can I say, it was never meant as a multimedia machine (Dell Inspiron 3800) Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[thadwalt]

The laptop probably has more video ram than the desktop. I suggest getting more video ram for the desktop.