AFAIK Voodoo1 does nothing to accelerate vídeo playback. The lowest card you can use to do that is a 3D RAGE II... On the nVidia side you'll have to go forward a little to the Geforce4 MX line.

I remember watching DVD's on an old HP PEntium Classic 166, it had a number nine PCI card in it, your chip can likely handle DVD decoding without a special card if you dont do anything else with it

I seem to remember that you need at least a Pentium II 450 to perform full software DVD decoding fast enough. K6 CPUs are worse off IIRC.

This is interesting:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost.php?p=80297&postcount=8

So far, of the tested cards, Rage128-Pro has most performace-acceleration. S3 Savage3D/4 and Rage128/Pro are neck to neck in ima […]
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So far, of the tested cards, Rage128-Pro has most performace-acceleration. S3 Savage3D/4 and Rage128/Pro are neck to neck in image-quality. (Savage has better downscaling below shrink factor of 0.5. Rage128 has better upscaling above zoom factor of 1.0.)

Strangely enough, Geforce2/MX has worst performance-acceleration, especially with PowerDVD.

Trident Blade3D has worst image quality (no subpic-alpha, and mediocre overlay-zoom quality.)

Rage-Pro and RageXL's overlay controller require minimum X-stretch factor of 2.0X (or drops adjacent pixels.) Probably due to RAMDAC and/or memory bandwidth constraint.

RageXL, despite iDCT support, is marginally faster than the other HWMC cards.

S3 Savage3D and NVidia Geforce2/MX both 'cheat' when constructing Directdraw overlays -- this means both devices allocate excessive video-memory. The Savage3D allocates exactly 2.0X 'expected amount' (16bpp 720x480 YUV overlay = 675KB. Savage3D allocates 1350KB.) Geforce2/MX allocates between 2-3X 'expected amount.'

SiS DVD-overlay performs hardware subpicture-alpha blending through overlay, but the subpicture overlay is filtered poorly (zoom/shrink looks worse than background DVD-video.)

S3 Savage3D/4, NVidia Geforce2/MX *probably* do NOT have hardware overlay blending. Instead, the drivers use BITBLT engine to combine subpicture data with decoded video-frame. Savage3D/4 both have 'perfect' overlay scaling (i.e. seamless blending with background, at all zoom/shrink factors.) Nvidia Geforce's subpicture-blending shows evidence of artifical sharpen-filter (edges of subtitle text are brighter than surrounding pixels?!?)

ATI Radeon uses 3D-core to perform BITBLT stretch/shrink. (This is obvious when playing AVI/MPEG at high-resolution, the screen wipes along a diagonal line. The diagonal line divides the upper screen exactly into 1 triangle.) Radeon's stretch-blt quality is *inferior* to Rage128, Savage3D.

It was a bit of a mess finding the best software and hardware for DVD playback. 😀

There are of course also the special DVD cards like Creative DXR2/DXR3. These might be necessary to get smooth playback from a Pentium MMX. I think they are the most "full" hardware options.

What about the Sis 6326 PCI?

AFAIK SiS 6326 does decode DVDs... you'll need to find software that supports that, though. Video decoding acceleration wasn't as standardized as it is today.

I see on Ebay both the Sis 6326 and a Rage II with a included tv tuner card. Does the Rage II decode faster than the 6326? What about gaming performance too? I also saw an Xpert 98 (Rage XL) on there also. Does it compare well to the other 2 cards in games?

You need the Rage II+DVD chip for DVD support. The Rage II has weak 3D quality/performance. Rage Pro was a big step forward.

Judging by the previous quoted info, Rage 128 is better than all previous Rage products for DVD (and probably every other aspect too). It might be the best option other than DXR3.

Rage XL is a form of Rage Pro.

SiS 6326 has ok quality, but very slow 3D like Rage II.

Vintage3D.org has nice articles on 6326 and Rage II.

I was assuming that the older the dvd card, the better playback performance on slower systems than using a newer card. (based on the system requirements of the chosen card)

I would try out something like a pci Geforce 6200 if you can find one cheap.

computergeek92 wrote:

I was assuming that the older the dvd card, the better playback performance on slower systems than using a newer card. (based on the system requirements of the chosen card)

That's a possibility but it may not be the case at all. As far as I know the best option for really slow machines is a DXR2 or DXR3 (better quality) because it basically just uses the PC as a means to access the DVD and outputs via color-key overlay to desktop (or directly to a TV).

swaaye wrote:

computergeek92 wrote:

I was assuming that the older the dvd card, the better playback performance on slower systems than using a newer card. (based on the system requirements of the chosen card)

That's a possibility but it may not be the case at all. As far as I know the best option for really slow machines is a DXR2 or DXR3 (better quality) because it basically just uses the PC as a means to access the DVD and outputs via color-key overlay to desktop (or directly to a TV).

That sounds real good but I also wanted better gaming performance as well as DVD playback support.

Just looked at the Rage II gallery on Vintage3d. It looks like a total joke. haha

computergeek92 wrote:

I also wanted better gaming performance as well as DVD playback support.

In that case, I would look beyond 6326 and Rage II. They are not very useful for 3D games, IMO. Rage Pro is about Voodoo1 speed. Rage 128 is 2-3x that.

computergeek92 wrote:

Just looked at the Rage II gallery on Vintage3d. It looks like a total joke. haha

yeah essentially. Early 3D chip.

I had thought if I went with too fast a graphics card that the PMMX 233 would become a bottleneck. What is the fastest card to use without any bottlenecks? A Rage 128?

bottleneck it, what it means is you can play any game the cpu can without a care in the world. Who cares if your only ultilzing 3% of the gpu.

Some of the Diamond Stealth3D cards (like Stealth3D 3000) have optional MPEG decoder add-on daughter-boards for DVD. There's also stand-alone DVD decoder cards like Creative's DxR and the STB iMPACT cards (the STB cards were often paired with ATi boards iirc - they hook up via VESA feature connector). AFAIK none of the 3dfx cards actually will do anything for h/w DVD decoding.

Just as examples of complete boxed sets:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251955897802

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171797024461

candle_86 wrote:

bottleneck it, what it means is you can play any game the cpu can without a care in the world. Who cares if your only ultilzing 3% of the gpu.

+1, this is not the main issue. My 233MMX machine (in progress) has a GF2 Ti 64mb and i'm thinking about using a spare FX5600 I have just because this one has a DVI port. The performance will be the same although both are way overkill.

Be careful, though. Newer cards need newer drivers that might have a bigger CPU overhead, so using a faster card might actually hurt performance.

computergeek92 wrote:

I had thought if I went with too fast a graphics card that the PMMX 233 would become a bottleneck. What is the fastest card to use without any bottlenecks? A Rage 128?

Seems like a good bet to me. I might pick up a Rage 128 Pro card and experiment with it.

Though your problem is you are limited to PCI right? Rage 128 is typically AGP, other than the Apple versions of the cards.