Budget Computers?

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I have a celeron 533 Mhz with every on board but am running a PCI Voodoo3 3000. I know most have you have laughed but college students do have budgets. My DVD skips which annoys the hell out of me. I was wondering what I should do to be able to play decent games and definetly non- skip DVD? I was thinking a 700 t-bird, do you think that is too much?I'm taking suggestions.

Thanks
 
Hmmmm....how much RAM do you have?

Your system *could* be tripping over its own virtual memory. Do you hear your hard drive spinning while your DVD skips?

I'm running a PCI card (Cougar Maxi Gamer PCI - TNT M64) with a Duron 600 and it doesn't skip on DVDs, not even at 1280x1024x32 bit. Maybe a frame or two on a chapter change, but that's all. Sure, I could upgrade my video card....but why?

If you have 32-64MB of RAM, try buying more memory first. It's dirt cheap these days and wouldn't hurt.

-OCPlaya
 
Listen to OCPlaya..... your hardware should be plenty fast enough for steady DVD frame rates. Does your system have alot of overhead running? press <ctrl><alt><del> all you need is EXPLORER and SYS TRAY.

<font color=green> slice-N-dice </font color=green>
Nothing travels faster than the speed of pain
 
Well I only have 96 mb of PC 100 memory with a 533 celeron. I don't really hear my hard drive spinning. My mobo has everything onboard too so wouldn't that take cpu power away on top of everything else.
 
It most certainly would. If you have onboard sound, especially in 3D mode, that would slow things down. Even replacing it with a cheap sound board would help. You can pick up a basic SBLive for $50 or less without really trying.

But one important question I forgot to ask....Is your DVD-ROM operating in DMA mode? Open your control panel, click on system and check your CD-ROM properties. One of the buttons should be labeled 'DMA'.

Some motherboards won't allow you to operate your DVD in DMA mode. If they don't, replace the motherboard. I've even seen Athlon 800s skip and stutter on DVD playback if the drive isn't set to DMA mode.

-OCPlaya
 
Well to reply to all. I have built computers before taht is not the problem but I have never overclocked. It seems that I don't need to really do that. I'm probably going to get the Duron 700 with an ATI graphics considering it has teh best DVD decoding. What does DMA do? I just set it but haven't tried it.
Thanks
 
A DVD with DMA mode activated under the 'Properties' menu will run considerably faster than it otherwise would.....but it could create conflicts with other components.

Another idea would be to try a better PCI video board from a store offering a money-back policy (Wal-Mart, Best Buy) and seeing if that helps. Still cheaper than a CPU/MBD upgrade...

-OCPlaya