minimal video card for DVDs

Whats the minimal video card to play DVDs at their best (I don't play 3D games)?

Hmm, the cheapest modern video card to give you top-quality and performance in DVD playback is the Radeon 7000.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

Yes, agreed

The Radeon VE = Radeon 7500 and the Radeon LE 32MB DDR = lower clocked 32MB DDR RAM with HyperZ disabled. However the LE is a better buy because you can easily overclock it back to retail spec and enable HyperZ.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

Yes, me have big RADEON LE TVO with awesome memory heatsinks and phat 60mm fan, BIOS modified to 183 (but it do higher if need), HyperZ enabled.

BTW, the memory heatsinks did little for me, the 60mm fan (screwed to the memory heatsinks on two corners to bridge it over the original GPU sink), did little also. I used to have a 50mm fan affixed to the GPU sink, it did just as well. But all this BIG cooling LOOKS cool when I pull the cover off! Do you know how I can raise the core and memory voltage so as to take advantage of this extra cooling at a higher clock rate?

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

I have played DVDs with a PII 350 (100 FSB) underclocked to 300 mHz, on a SOYO mobo with 256 MB of RDRAM (800), 33 UDMA hard drive, and a 1x agp ATI card (I think it's a rage pro). The picture and frame rate is very good (sometimes, you see a flicker, but I think that's due to a slow fraged hard drive). According to Norton Utilities, the CPU works at around 70-90% load even at 300 mHz.

So, I am curious as to why I see so many people say you need at least 500 mhZ to run DVDs. Could the RDRAM make the difference (I thought its latency would hurt)? Maybe the 512K cache, but this is only at half speed.

With a DVD decoder or an ATI card, you don't have to have an extremely fast processor to play DVDs smoothly. I love the fact that I can play DVDs with only 10% CPU utilization.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

I can tell you you are wrong there especially with Motion Compensation and the way MPEG2 works. One way MPEG2 decreases file sizes is by only storing the difference in pixels between each frame whenever there isn't a lot of motion. In high motion scenes, this isn't possible and you are looking at more data being processed at that time and the CPU load would increase.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor