G400 and G400 MAX hard or soft?

[eje2001]

The G400 and G400 MAX cards are they Hardware or Software based decoder cards? Thanks

[dsp]

eje2001,

The G400 and G400MAX are HARDWARE ASSIST devices, basically they take the strain of motion compensation off the CPU and do it in hardware but leaves the rest to the CPU. Hope this answers your question.

dsp

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AMD K6-2 350@400MHz
128MB Generic PC-133 RAM
13.6GB Maxtor 7200RPM Hard Drive
Toshiba SD-M1212 6X DVD ROM
ACER 2X/2X/6X CD-RW
SB Live Value w/digital out
Matrox G400 32MB Dualhead Vanilla @ 157/210/157
15" Daytek 1531D
PD 5.52
Win 98SE
10Base-T Ethernet card (Realtek 8029)
10/100 Ethernet card (D-Link)
DSL (Yahoo!!!!)

[eje2001]

If I get a DVD player with a MPEG decoder will this take the entire strain of the CPU or would this cause me to have two decoders causing a problem? Thanks for the info dsp

[This message has been edited by eje2001 (edited 18 May 2000).]

[paulcs]

I assume you're talking about a DVD decoder board like the Hollywood Plus. They take up a lot of work, but not all of it.

There shouldn't be a problem. The hardware decoder will have its own proprietary software and it should run fine. I haven't heard on any conflicts with the G400.

Most DVD encoders require an IRQ, so you should keep that in mind. While the TV output is generally pretty good, I found software solutions to have better monitor output.

The monitor output on the G400 is great. If you have a fast CPU, it shouldn't be a problem.

If DVD is the be all and end all of your videocard requirements, you might want to consider an ATI board like the Rage Pro. I say "might," because while ATI does DVD playback very, very well, they seem to do a bad job with everything else. It's not that they don't support their boards with driver updates. It's just that their drivers are lousy.

Again, if you have a fast CPU, the G400 should work fine for you. The image quality is about as good as it gets, and it works with a number of software players.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 18 May 2000).]

[Rags]

There is no such DVD decoder card out there that will take the entire load off of the cpu. But You will see about 1/2 to 1/3 of the cpu strain on your cpu if you use a DVD Decoder card as opposed to using the bundled DVD software with the G400. With a P3 733EB, I see about 25-35% CPU usage which is not too bad, and I am not wasting a PCI slot, or using a crummy pass-through. But, if you prefer to use a decoder, there is nothing preventing you from doing so with the G400.

Rags

[eje2001]

Thanks for the info.