How fast a CPU do I need to run a DVD drive

[Milton Miller]

I have a TP 600 with a 233 Mhz CPU. I upgraded the hard drive added a CD-R/RW. I use it to store photo from my digital cameras and then burn them to CDs when we are traveling. The wife also plays a few games on it, I’m a Civil War buff and she is not. It works great for that, but I am wondering how fast a CPU I would need to upgrade to so that I could use a DVD rom to watch movies on it. If upgrading the CPU would allow that, it would be one less thing that I would have to plug in and recharge every night.

[Rick Aguinaldo]

I managed to play a movie using PowerDVDXP on a 300-mhz TP600 machine. Even after shutting down startup loaded and resource hogging apps, there is still some picture jitter, but I would say the plot just drowned those minor hiccups . Others fared better using the hardware video accelerator.

[whizkid]

The fastest 600's came with a 300MHz PII, which should JUST do the job to watch a DVD. You might look at upgrading your CPU with (dare I say it) a Celeron to keep your 66MHz bus happy.

[Dutchman]

I have no experience with the 600's, but I have a LOT of experience with 770's. I find that a 770 233 Mhz with an Enhanced Vider Adapter (EVA Card) installed with the correct drivers (MPEG) plays DVD's Perfectly via Win 98 SE pushing DVD Express as the DVD Software.

The same computer does just as good a job running Win 2000 pushing the DVD PLAYER Software that comes with 2000.

No jitters with either Operating System at 233 Mhz. The Key is in the EVA Card and the Software

NOTE:
I have experienced numerous problems with Power DVD on every operating System except XP.... And I never could get XP to work on my 770

[JHEM]

Dutchman,

Your experience with the 770 is more indicative of the fact that the DVD decoding is being done by the DEVA card and not the CPU.

The same can be said of a 600 series machine with a Margi DVD-to-Go card installed, the decoding is handled by the card, not the CPU.

IBME that the minimum processor required to playback DVDs on it's own is a PII 366MHz and even that is subject to some frame drops depending on the sequence being viewed.

Regards,

James