k6 500 mHz enough?

**screwmesa** · 04-12-2005, 03:28 PM

Hi all,

Will a k6 500 mHz be enough to play mp3s and dvds?

I'm more worried about the dvds, but it will have 512 mb of ram.

Thanks.

**Scouse Monkey** · 04-12-2005, 03:38 PM

hmmm not sure. a P3 450 will paly DVDs ok but i dunno about old AMD chips.

if DVD is your only issue get a graphics card with DVD decode (any one int he last 4 years or so) or a hollywood plus card from ebay.

edit: make that over 5 or maybe 6 years infact! Damn it's 2005 already!

**will1384** · 04-12-2005, 11:18 PM

I had a AMD K6-2 400MHZ - it had problems with Divx
I upgraded to a k6-3 450mhz and it played but skiped a lot

As far as DVD, a good AGP or PCI video card will play them fine
as most new-er Video cards have the decoder hardware on them

I would try to get a faster system - but it may work just fine

**0l33l** · 04-12-2005, 11:24 PM

This would be a case were i'd actually recommend a VIA system. Its most likely going to be faster.

**Mask of Destiny** · 04-12-2005, 11:30 PM

A K6-2 500 should have enough power for software DVD playback. I've seen software DVD playback run okay on a 400MHz Celeron so as long as your DVD software is relatively well optimized it should work.

You might actually want to go with an older video card (particularly since most of the really new cards won't work in an AGP 2X bus which is presumably what your K6-2 has) as the newer cards assume you have more CPU cycles to burn on things like DVDs so they can offload more of the decoding to the CPU. The ATI Rage Fury has a pretty good DVD decoder. I was able to play DVDs with only a 350MHz K6-2 using one of those cards. Should be really cheap now.

**meyer64** · 04-13-2005, 12:11 AM

older amds have always seemed to do poorly on multimedia playbak in my experience. where a slower intel celeron would play it just fine. I have a k6-2 450, 256 mb ram in the basement and it will not play divx or dvd smoothly in software.

**0l33l** · 04-13-2005, 12:27 AM

Originally Posted by meyer64

older amds have always seemed to do poorly on multimedia playbak in my experience. where a slower intel celeron would play it just fine. I have a k6-2 450, 256 mb ram in the basement and it will not play divx or dvd smoothly in software.

Ditto

**Gazza** · 04-13-2005, 01:31 AM

Best to try it. I am running a P3 450mhz with 256 meg ram using the on-board video and it plays DVD's just fine using PowerDVD.

Cheers.

**0l33l** · 04-13-2005, 01:39 AM

Originally Posted by Gazza

Best to try it. I am running a P3 450mhz with 256 meg ram using the on-board video and it plays DVD's just fine using PowerDVD.

Cheers.

Yeh, but you've got a P3. The P3 is much better than the AMD. Really. The AMD chips were slow, until they got to the athlons.

**screwmesa** · 04-13-2005, 11:16 AM

Thanks mask of destiny I'll try to pick up one of those cards. hard drive's in the mail, waiting to get it then I'll try the onboard and see how horrible it is.