Pentium III-S compatibility

[Jackalope73]

I would be willing to concede the power consumption issue.I would feel better about it if it was the white paper from Intel or specifying 512k cache cpu as the shrink would be almost negated by the extra cache. But again this is all ancient history has little to do with the overall issue. That has been totally explored at this point.

 

[joefriday]

The bigger question here is why this guy would need a PIII-s to run MythTV. The PVR150 is usually the standard capture card used in a MythTV build, and since it is a hardware capture card, the cpu is not important. A 700 MHz Coppermine is powerful enough to play back mpeg2. Hell a K6-2 can play mpeg2. Besides, all graphics chips from 2000 and newer have hardware mpeg2 decoding built in, meaning once again the cpu doesn't matter for mpeg2. The 700 MHz Coppermine is also fast enough for DivX/mpeg4. My friend's PII 450 is just barely fast enough to play DivX files, the Coppermine 700 is more than enough. Seriously, unless the Myth box will also be doing some transcoding, it doesn't need more than the 700 mHz Coppermine. Save your money.

 

[Jackalope73]

The bigger question here is why this guy would need a PIII-s to run MythTV. The PVR150 is usually the standard capture card used in a MythTV build, and since it is a hardware capture card, the cpu is not important. A 700 MHz Coppermine is powerful enough to play back mpeg2. Hell a K6-2 can play mpeg2. Besides, all graphics chips from 2000 and newer have hardware mpeg2 decoding built in, meaning once again the cpu doesn't matter for mpeg2. The 700 MHz Coppermine is also fast enough for DivX/mpeg4. My friend's PII 450 is just barely fast enough to play DivX files, the Coppermine 700 is more than enough. Seriously, unless the Myth box will also be doing some transcoding, it doesn't need more than the 700 mHz Coppermine. Save your money.

Agreed.

Digital convergence is a lie! 😀

 

[ggking7]

I'm seeing some dropped frames on interlaced DVDs (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Da Ali G Show), but not on cinematic ones.

If you think a Celeron 700 will be enough, I'll give it a try first. My PVR150 is on its way. I really don't think my onboard video does MPEG2 decoding though.

Overclocking the Celeron 700 with a 100fsb sounds like it might be worth a try. I'm going to post another topic about that.

Also, why is digital convergence a lie?

 

[joefriday]

I have owned several 810E computers in the past, and I'm sure they have some hardware acceleration for mpeg2 playback. I just checked Intel's site, and they say the 810E has hardware motion compensation, which according to this link decreases the CPU load by 20% as compared to no hardware acceleration at all. Can you see how much CPU % is being used to play those DVDs that drop frames? If the cpu isn't maxed out, it's not the problem.

Check to see if your i810E is the DC100 model (it should say DC100 right on the chip if it is), as it has 4 MB of dedicated memory for it's IGP. If it's not, that may be the reason the you're experiencing dropped frames. Still, there are better graphics solutions. ATI's Rage Pro and Rage 128 have not only HMC but iDCT, making them some of the best DVD-playing graphics chipsets out there (especially so in 1998). A 16MB PCI version of the ATI Rage 128 can be found on Ebay for pennies. The only problem with that is I've heard ATI doesn't work well in Linux.

Also, the program you use for DVD playing on your computer has a fairly large impact on how well the DVD plays. What program are you currently using to playback your DVDs? Is there any other program out there you could try? Perhaps a different algorithm is all that's needed to get past those dropped frame rate issues.

Good luck on the MythTV build.

 

[NightlySputnik]

Use a utility like SANDRA (google search should fing it for you) and run it. Check the mainboard section and it'll tell you your chipset with all possible details including revision of the board you're using and also the motherboard maker. It's a small download at less than 10 MB.

With that go on both Intel and Dell site to check chipset and BIOS compatibility with this cpu.
Good luck!