Videos skip. Will a new card help?

This is probably not the type of question you are used to receiving considering the mediocre hardware I am dealing with. I volunteer at church in assisting with the operation of our audio video equipment. A while back, we decided to set up dual monitors on our pc (one monitor, one projector). The problem was, our mediocre dell only had pci ports. I had an ancient pci video card (voodoo 3) lying around, so we threw that in. We don't really need much in the lines of graphics power, our projector runs at a resolution of 800x600. However, we have began using more videos in our services. Its strange because, usually the video displays okay, but the audio will skip. Occasionally the video might drop a few frames, but audio is the main issue. We can play mpegs alright, but just about anything else gives issues. Videos seem to play fine on the monitor, just not the project (which is using the voodoo 3). The computer is certainly no powerhouse either. It has a hyperthreaded pentium (single core) running at a clock rate of 3.2 ghz, but that's all I can remember offhand. Would replacing the video card help, or is the pc likely the problem? Thanks ahead of time!

If you have donations and an extra pci slot, get a sound card

jaydeejohn, I had thought the internal sound might be an issue, but as I said above this problem is only on the second monitor (projector). Is it still possible the soundcard is the problem? Thanks for the reply.

One way to check is, if you can, check your task manager for cpu usage. If its maxxed out running what you desire (the cpu), then its probably the audio, and a sound card would/should resolve it

Have you tried a fresh Windows installation or at least some driver cleanup? Have you tried some sort of Linux LiveCD? Linux is often much friendlier to old crappy PCs.

Sorry to bump up an old thread. We have had some audio related issues lately and our computer took second chair. I did, however, do some testing this morning with task manager. When playing a video, cpu usage stayed mostly around 60 to 70 percent, sometimes jumping as high as 90. The sound freezing, however, would occur even when usage was around 60 percent. Is the internal sound still likely the issue, or could it be the video card. Also, this unit has 1gb of ram. We basically have a fresh windows install on this unit. It has the bare minmum programs we need, although we could trim out some windows updates. Linux is, unfortunitely, not an option because we use windows only software. Thanks for the posts though guys.

Having either a newer (from the 2xxx series for ATI, or 8xxx series for nVidia) gfx card will help in video playback, as will a soundcard. The gfx card can be seen helping here
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 651-8.html
Check the link, it should help you, just make sure you get a compatable gfx card, and 1 that has the video chip onboard