VIA Ezra C3 and Rage 128 Pro (fast enough?)

[ElQuapo]

Does anyone know if a computer based these 2 components is fast enough to play divx? I'm thinking of building a standalone player. The Ezra can be either 700mhz or 933mhz and the Rage 128 has 32mb ram and is the cheapest card I can find with a tv-out.
Any help would be much appreciated :-)

[UGAthecat]

For making a video system, stay away from VIA CPUs as they cut corners with the FPU and extra instructions which cause them to be incredibly slow with video. the 1ghz C3 performs almost 3x worse than a 667 celeron in encoding video and audio, and you can expect similarly bad performance for decoding.
Benchies: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20020605/c3-06.html

Your best bet for low cost video system is a low end AMD based system. If you can find a deal and jump on it you can save gobs of cash. I just got a MB and Athlon XP 1700+ for $79 US, both parts full retail not oem.

[ElQuapo]

Thanks for the info. I was considering a VIA because it can run without a cpu-fan and I want to build a silent system. But I'll stay away from it now.

[droolian01]

Hi

Why don't you check out a low speed celeron/pent 3, these run very cool and you may be able to get with passive cooling (zolman flower cooler or something like that)or a very slow quite fan, a 1 ghz should do nicely.

[smiller667]

Also read this review: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/viaepiam/ - they specifically look at the system's suitability for DVD and mpeg4 playback (also read the link at the top for more information on related VIA systems). The onboard video has DVD/mpeg2 hardware acceleration and apparently compensates for the relative weakness of the CPU. This is not a fanless system, though.