Please no laughing

[Sir Golitech]

I have probably got the stupidest question to ask.

A friend of mine just got a PC from his dad.I'll tell you now...it's old, AMD K6 500MHz old.It has a Trident(micro-systems)Blade3/MVP4 8MB on board video.My friend says he was able to play DVD's on the system and now for some reason ,when he plays a movie or music the system slows right down(jerky like).He just got Future Shop to install more memory(256), only cause he got XP put on it and they told him that 128MB is not enough to run XP.

So I believe it's not the memory holding him back.Could it be the on board video?Is there anywhere to download a driver for it?Current driver is dated 2001.

Any help would be great.Oh yeah and thanks for not laughing


Cheers
Goli

 

[NewbiePerson]

256mb is the recommended minimum. Try turning off all the video effects. I installed xp on a very similar system to that except 500mhz cyrix with 64mb of ram. Plays music fine. Playing a dvd may stress that system a bit (Since you probably don't have a hardware dvd decoder I think your cpu would be a little busy not sure though) so if you have any backgound stuff running turn it off.
Check into turning unused services off as well. Check ur cpu usage aim for 0% before you do anything. Also check the amount of free system ram you have before you start something like that up. Your ram should be more than fine though. Maybe defrag your drive too not that it would help a lot but every little bit helps for a system like that.....
Your probably not going to see a newer driver for that video card. Check the man. website just to be sure though. Also make sure you dl all the window updates as well.

 

[PoX Freak]

Just a suggestion.....
Maybe upgrading the CPU might help a little.
Also, i think some manufacturers used some sort of thermal throttling for the CPU, so when things got hot, stuff slows down.
If you take a look around, you might get your hands on a k6-2 550 or something with sse2 extensions.

 

[Alacritan]

For the cost of purchase and installation of that RAM, he could have upgraded his system to twice what it is.

 

[Agent_Mull]

For the cost of purchase and installation of that RAM, he could have upgraded his system to twice what it is.

lol, yeah alot faster

but actually as slow as that is, i was using one that slow only 6 months ago, and it actually isnt that slow for non gaming stuff

 

[Evnas]

Lol...the guys at future shop were trying to make more money...128mb would have been fine (128mb+ is the recommended)

Anyways, the problem could very well be the entire system. Most likely he doesnt have a hardware DVD decoder (found on many video cards these days), so all the work is being down by the CPU. A 500Mhz CPU isnt bad for DVD's, but because the video is onboard, a lot of work for that is also being done by the CPU and system memory, effictivly slowing down the whole opperation

If you were to pick up a newer video card (something along the lines of a GF2, or even a Voodoo), everything would be MUCH smoother, as that takes the burden of anything video off of the CPU and system memory, allowing them to be more dedicated to other tasks like watching a DVD

 

[DayUSeX]

check to see what applications are running, using taskmanager. Also a fresh install never hearts, as im pretty sure the place just did an upgrade. The fresh install is your best bet mostlikely.

 

[jhl3]

Try a decent cheap pci vid card. This is sometimes better than a memory or cpu upgrade on older systems.

 

[PingSpike]

I'd get a duron/cheapo motherboard. Those are dirt cheap, pretty zippy and if you have pc100 memory it can be used with one of the older durons that are still easy to find. Might even be able to get those parts for 50-60 bucks.

 

[voodoomelon]

I'd try getting your hand on an old Voodoo 3 3000 or similar. It was one of the first 3d cards to have dvd hardware decoding, giving 30-40 fps on dvd playback. I have one lying around somewhere, but 'fraid I keep it for backup.

 

[Como]

i have a k6-2 500 with a trident blade 8meg as well. only my vid card is agp 1X, not integrated.

have not tried to play dvd's on it, no dvd drive yet. but it works good, its running 98SE fine, will play quake 3 at 640X480 with all the eye candy off at decent speeds (20+FPS)

i see no reason it wouldnt play dvd's.
maybe its XPs fault? i installed XP pro on a 75 mhz computer with 64 megs of ram...upped it to 133 mhz after that, it boots as fast as this k6-2 loads 98SE.
try taking all of the crap off the ram. (msconfig), or go back to using 98! that computer should play DVD's fine.

 

[Sir Golitech]

I think that might have been his problem(to many things running in the background).I'll check it out tomorrow.

Thanks for the help guys
Cheers
Goli

 

[CamH]

The problem, I think, is Windows XP. It is MUCH slower than Windows 9x, which is probably what he was using before. I have an old laptop with a DVD player. It can run DVD's under Windows 9x but not under Windows XP or 2000. All of the hardware's supported.

My guess is that if he switches back to 9x he'll be able to play DVD's again.

 

[Evnas]

The problem, I think, is Windows XP. It is MUCH slower than Windows 9x, which is probably what he was using before. I have an old laptop with a DVD player. It can run DVD's under Windows 9x but not under Windows XP or 2000. All of the hardware's supported.

My guess is that if he switches back to 9x he'll be able to play DVD's again.

Windows XP isnt slower at all...it just uses more resources, and when it comes to running at bare minimum, im sure both OS's are rather slow

 

[CamH]

Windows XP isnt slower at all...it just uses more resources, and when it comes to running at bare minimum, im sure both OS's are rather slow

The fact that it uses more resources is exactly what makes it slower. On a low end machine this makes a HUGE difference.

 

[Sir Golitech]

The problem, I think, is Windows XP. It is MUCH slower than Windows 9x, which is probably what he was using before. I have an old laptop with a DVD player. It can run DVD's under Windows 9x but not under Windows XP or 2000. All of the hardware's supported.

My guess is that if he switches back to 9x he'll be able to play DVD's again.

I think you might be on to something there CamH.Playing DVD's before was on 98 and with XP you do get alot more crap running in the background(task manager)then with 98.

Cheers, I'll look into that.

 

[Yamiyanazz]

Yeah, my suggestions is to turn off all the effects, and make sure surround sound and all those special things are off. No need for those anyway. When I was using a 350MHz K6-2, I couldn't play DivX movies at all, I turned all the video settings to low, and the movies ran perfect! I couldn't even tell a difference.