is my computer crappy??

[Erki]

I have K6-2 400@500, 128Mb RAM, ATI XPERT2000 32Mb, 10Gb Quantum Fireball. Not the worst PC I think. It works fine but when I want to watch some DivX movies, picture jumps awfully and sound is way ahead of film itself. But some movies play fine, also in good quality. File size is not relevant at all, I have noticed. I have tried different players, codecs but nothing.

Also I've heard that one P2-233 plays them perfect (haven't seen myself but belive).

So what the problem could be??

Erki

 

[Biggs]

I'm just curious, what does the K6-2 compare to on the Intel side, PII or Celery?

 

[Mule]

It compares to the PII even though it gets spanked by it. A PIII is just a Celery on steroids. I would say that your system as a whole is ok, but your processor = suck.

I know someone who had a K6 500 lappy and it really sucked, a PII at 366 would spank it in every performance category.

 

[CygnusX1]

What DVD software are you using? Are you taking advantage of the ATI card's hardware DVD decoding or are you trying to rely on the CPU to do decoding in software? What sound card do you have?

Mark.

 

[zippy]

<< It compares to the PII even though it gets spanked by it. A PIII is just a Celery on steroids. >>


The K6-2 was aimed to compete with the P2, but really it can't.

A P3 is NOT a Celeron on steroids! The Celeron came out in the days of the P2 to compete with the K6(-2) in the low end market. At first it had no L2 cache- hence it contracted the name &quot;Celery&quot; because it was about as bland as a vegetable. Then the &quot;A&quot; version of the Celeron came out which was injected with 128k L2 Cache running at full speed on-die- the first Celeron &quot;A&quot; was the beloved Celeron 300A (there was also a Celeron 300 NON-A) which was widely known to be able to overclock to at least 450MHz with a 100MHz front side bus.

Later on the P3 came out with the Katmai core which has 512k of L2 cache running off-die at 1/2 the CPU's clock speed. Then after the Katmai came the Coppermine core which has 256k of L2 cache running at full speed on-die. THEN came the Celeron2 which has 128k L2 on-die full speed cache. Really though, the Celeron2 is a P3 coppermine on a strong sedative. It has 1/2 as much cache and, it has been rumored, a higher latency to this cache. The Celeron2's are rumored to be the P3 Coppermines that couldn't make the high speeds with all 256k L2 enabled.

 

[The Wildcard]

Well if you want a quick upgrade, maybe you can get a k6-3? i think you wuld still be able to use the same motherboard. That should help a little.

 

[A2KLAU]

Or failing that if you want to just go and get a new mobo and Duron combo for pretty cheap these days! And OC to your hearts desire! Durons are the best for OCing, but can not get to the very high GHz as the T-Birds can... But if you want to save alot of money then do as The_Wildcard said! Go for a K6-3! The rest is OK no problems with those components!

Good Luck with the upgrade!

Albert.

 

[Erki]

Thanks for all these comments!

I have an old ALS100 ISA soundcard, for watching movies I use mostly Windows Media player 6.4.07.1112 but also tried BSPlayer 081. I tried AngelPotions Videocodec V1 and DivX codec alpha 3.11. No change at all. The worst thing was WinMediaPlayer 7. Every setting says that hardware acceleration is set to full. Hope it clarifies things.

Erki

 

[Zorba]

One of my computers is a K6-2 400@500 with 96MB of RAM. It has never had a problem with DivX movies. Have you tried updating all your drivers?

 

[office boy]

Are you sure the movies are ok? and barring that have your turned the CPU utilization down to 0 in the DivX playback settings?

 

[smp]

I wouldn't think that it's your machine. I watch lot's of movie (clips mind you) on my old man's 200 mmx. They work fine. You sure you got the right codecs, or maybe it's some other software related problem?

 

[monotone]

Do you have any cache on the motherboard? A K6-2 doesn't have L2 cache, it needs to be on the motherboard. DivX is the most hardware demanding commenly used codec and without L2 cache your box gets really slow.

 

[JokerF15]

if you really want (or need) to upgrade, see if your motherboard can support a k6-3+. the 450's are around 50-60 bux, and u can overclock to around 600mhz. i know people will say why not just get a duron, b/c then he has to get a new motherboard also. but look at the motherboard, and see if it supports it, it may even need a new bios upgrade.

ive heard the that k6-3+ is comparable almost to the athlon..so...pretty good upgrade =)

 

[sparkle]

I don't know, did it have something greasy for dinner?

 

[Erki]

My mobo is Chaintech's 5AGM2 that has 512 kb cash on board. (its highest multiplier setting is 5,5x100 and I don't know if it supports 'new' k6-2+ and 3+)

I suspected that it could be the movies problems, but when the guy from whom I borrowed the movies said that they shold work perfectly and they work on his p-2 233. That leaves us the software problem.

What am I missing? I've tried AngelPotions Videocodec V1 and DivX codec alpha 3.11 for codecs side and many players that I found on site that was mentioned in one other post here (direct or divx digest or something like that). Nothing changes exept that with Windows media player 7 nothing really worked at all. So any suggestions what more programs/drivers do I need (now Win media player 6.4 and BSPlayer 0.81)??

Whre can I adjust this CPU load setting?

Erki

P.S. I am not so eager to upgrade cause everithyng else works just fine and many movies too. I personally hope that my computer last at least a year or year and a half.

 

[monotone]

A K6-2 500 with cache should have no problems running these movies. Make sure you have NOTHING running in the background (icq, antivirus software, etc).

Another thing to try is to run without sound, your soundcard is ISA with uses alot of cpu power in itself. Might want to disable it completely in device manager just to be absolute sure.

Using Media Player 6.4 with the DivX 3.11 alpha codec is fine.

 

[Yoshi]

K6-2 is just not a good solution for heavy multi-media applications. That platform is old and tired, sounds like it is time for an upgrade. Duron perhaps??

 

[ElFenix]

the k6 was designed by nexgen back in the days of the pentium to be the processor after the Nx586. AMD bought nexgen after the K5 was horribly late and didn't ramp up in MHz very well (the fastest one was only going about 110MHz or so). although integer performance is definitely on par with intel's 6th generation, the FPU performance is pentium levels at best, which has led several sites to ask why AMD is claiming the athlon is 7th gen when they never had a 6th gen.