Crappy performance with Radeon VIVO and SONY DVD in Win2k

[Trek4000]

Can anybody give me any suggestions on my issues. I have a few things going on that I can't seem to resolve.

Here is my rig:
AMD Athlon 1GHz @ 1GHz
MSI K7T Turbo-R (BIOS ver: 2.5) Not using IDE-RAID.
Integrated Sound
Crucial 256mb CL2 PC133
Radeon 64mb VIVO (driver ver: 5.13.01.3102)(1280 x 1024 x 32 @ 85Mhz)
SONY 12x DVD (DU1211)
Maxtor 40gig ATA/100
Adaptec 2940UW
HP 9210i CD-RW (SCSI)
IOMega Zip 100 (SCSI)
3Com 3C905TX
------------------------
I am running Win2K SP1.

First problem:
DVD playback is choppy. I changed the IDE2 to UDMA for the DVD, but the same problem still occurs. Problem occurs with ATI DVD player (ver 4.01) and PowerDVD (ver 3). The video becomes choppy from the start and then the sound starts to mess up after a minute or so. It doesn't lock up, but it just plays choppy. I have the DVD on IDE2 as master with nothing else attached, while my HD is on IDE1 as master with nothing else attached.

Second problem:
I installed downloaded and installed 3DMark2001 and ran through the tests without making any changes to the graphics. Ran at 1024 x 768 x 32bit, and figured it would be decent. After running the test, all the tests look great under low res, but when the test change to high res, good lord. Try playing a game like Q3 for example, and blink your eyes really fast.. That's about as good as gets for me. sux huh.. I even ran the tests at a higher refresh rate, and same sh*t happens.. My results were somewhere in the area of 1223. I have seen some people in the 3000 range, so I think I lacking a bit in the performance area.

Can anybody provide any feedback, on how I can get this lazy ass puter, running on all 8 cylinders. I really do not know what or where the problem exists, but any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance

-Trek

 

[Kishkumen]

I would point immediately to the "Integrated Sound" you list in your system specs as the culprit. DVDs are extremely hard on sound cards b/c they use 48khz sound, AC3 downmixing and all sorts of other effects that the DVD software tries to do. Since the integrated sound is most likely not a pure hardware solution but also relies on software, then the sound software could be having a hard time keeping up with the DVD software. Grab a cheap, i.e. $30, dedicated hardware sound card and see if that doesn't fix the problem. If not, return it. I had an MX300 not too long ago based on the now defunct Aureal company and probably b/c of a lack of good driver support in win2k sound when playing DVDs always had a hard time regardless of the DVD software used even though games, mp3s etc played perfectly. I changed it to a cheap $30 Sound Blaster 128 card and *poof* no more audio problem when playing DVDs.

 

[apoppin]

I have a Toshiba 12x and had the same problem with playback (it wouldn't work at all with my Raite 8x). ATI just upgraded their DVD player to version 4.1.0.0 (last week). Get the latest off their website.

It now works fine for me. Excellent DVD playback (finally).

As to your second problem: Are you using DirectX 8.0a? 3DMark2001 requires it.