Derrik Draven Posted August 20, 2004 Report Share Posted August 20, 2004 I bought a used Inspiron from a friend on Monday. Just upgraded the memory to 640mb. Plenty of memory. The processor is a 1.8ghz Pentium 4. The video card is a Radeon 9000/64mb. For the life of me I can't figure out why the hell videos play SO DAMN CHOPPY in media player 9?!!? :wtf: Hell, even the cool little visualizations run at the same choppy rate as my 500mhz Pentium 3 with a Voodoo 3 card!??! Anyone have any clues? I've tried all sorts of different setting on the ATI control panel. It does have the latest drivers. I'm at a loss. I have to believe that this system has enough horsepower to run the rinky-dink visualizations in media player, with no problems. At a loss here... :bang: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeyN Posted August 20, 2004 Report Share Posted August 20, 2004 Check the battery settings on it. It may be set to run at max battery, instead of max performance, which makes all the videos run choppy. Had it happen to myself when i first got mine capt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted August 20, 2004 Report Share Posted August 20, 2004 Are you using Windows Media Player? If so, I've found performance on my aged machine improves significantly when I turn off Hardware Accelereation in the WMP options menu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derrik Draven Posted August 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2004 Hmmm...I'll try changing the power settings. That's the 2nd time I've been told that. Hopefully that's the ticket! Yes, I'm using Media Player. I tried turning off the hardware acceleration but, it was exactly the same as with it at max. I know that the problem could not have anything to do with spyware, needed a defrag, ect...to be causing the slowdown. I reformatted and reinstld xp pro the day I bought this thing. No spyware, no defragging needed. Thanx for the tips guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelley Posted August 20, 2004 Report Share Posted August 20, 2004 You could also switch to a great program called Media Player Classic, search for it on sourceforge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted August 20, 2004 Report Share Posted August 20, 2004 Originally posted by gigapower@Aug 20 2004, 03:23 PM You could also switch to a great program called Media Player Classic, search for it on sourceforge. I was going to recommend grabbing the K Lite codec pack to get Media Player Classic, but all the links now point to some other site?! -j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buck Posted August 20, 2004 Report Share Posted August 20, 2004 From the run box on Windows XP (might be in 2K as well) type mplayer2. It's version 6.4 I believe and no downloading is required. As far as the problem you're having with MP 9, I agree with Joey. Anytime a friend of mine has had this problem, it was always the power settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derrik Draven Posted August 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2004 Thanx for the tips guys. I finally figured out what the culprit was. The speedstep processor in this thing was "stuck" in low power mode. It was constantly running at a 1.2ghz setting instead of the 1.8, like it should. Even adjusting the settings in the bios (which I also flashed to the latest/greatest) wouldn't do a thing. Found a patch on Dell's website specifically for fixing "stuck" speedstep cpu's. Apparently, some of them would permanently fix themselves to the lower speed setting if at any time the cpu maxed out at 100 percent load. Never would've thought of that!!! Anyhoo, downloaded the patch and now my videos and the visualizations run smoothly. Thanks again for giving me some tips. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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