Software vs. Hardware DVD

[n715dp]

System Specs...

-Athlon T-Bird 750
-384MB PC100 RAM
-Diamond Viper 770 Ultra
(TNT2 Ultra - 32MB RAM)
-Generic 12X DVD
-Yamaha 2100EZ CD-RW
-MSI K7T Pro-2A
-Promise FastTrack 66 Raid Controller
-3 IBM 13GB UATA66 7200 RPM 2MB Buffer
Hard Drives stripped
-Latest drivers for everything
-Win98SE

Now my question...

With a system like this I was having some serious trouble watching DVD's on my computer. The system became unstable, would crash all the time, if it did play, it was choppy and grainy. I bought a Creative DxR3 decoder card and now everything works great. I am just curious as to why it didn't work before the decoder. I know the system is not top class but it isn't too shabby either. What is it that could have caused problems? Thanks for your input.

[Yar1182]

could be the dvd drivers for your vid card. I know ATI cards had some DVD issues exspecially in Win2K untill the new DVD drivers came out. Either way harware decoder is the way to go. Some people say you don't need it if your just watching DVD and not multi tasking. I on the other hand have my dvd palyer running, hyper-snap to capture screen shots, and phot shop 6 to edit them. That's enough to give the cpu a good run for the money.

[DanU]

DVD playback should be a piece of cake for you. Even my K6-2 450 can handle software DVD decoding. Try downloading some benchmarking utilities like CDSpeed and compare your results to others.
www.come.to/cdspeed (http://www.come.to/cdspeed)

[Donkey]

Was DMS enabled on your DVD drive? that can make quite a bit of difference in playback quality

[JayMan]

What software are you using to play dvd's? I've got powerdvd, its great. Perhaps the software you are using wasn't coded the best resulting in the choppy playback?

And donkey, as for "DMS", i presume u mean DMA, and yes that will make quite a difference, but for some reason i can't enable dma (i used to but for some reason since i got my new mobo it don't wanna stick, whenever i tick it after reboot its gone again!), but i still get crystal clear playback without dma. I've got a panasonic/matsu****a 16x DVD, 1Ghz tbird etc.......

JayMan

[n715dp]

Yes, DMA (DMS http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif) was enabled... I was using WinDVD 2000 which is what came with the drive. Now that I have the Creative DxR3 I am using the Creative DVD player and it works perfectly. I know there was one other DVD player that I tried with the same choppy results. The choppyness wasn't bad, maybe 1 or 2 frams per second less then it was supposed to be, but on a 19 inch monitor at full screen it was noticable. I picked up a refurbished DxR3 direct from creative for $50 and I highly reccomend the card to anyone. I was skeptical of buying a refurbished one but coming direct from Creative I wasn' too worried. Anyway, thanks for the thoughts, this was justa curiosity thing anyway.