Winamp Question

[BMW POWER]

hi when i'm on the PC i like listening to music but i find that windows media player considerably lags everything down, i havent got a very powerful computer with only a 500mhz AMD and 344mb of RAM. i was wondering if Winamp would be more friendly on my slow PC, if so what version would you recommend?
cheers for any help
by the way i'm using XP Pro if that makes a difference

 

[Solid Fro]

XP is one problem. I wouldn't run XP on anything less than 900 MHz.

You can download Winamp3 and see how it runs. It is definitely faster than WMP 9, but it is a memory hog. If Winamp3 is too slow, try Winamp 2.9. It's the last version using Winamp's old code. It should be able to run on any system smoothly, even a 166 MHz can run it.

 

[rjensen11]

use Winamp2.x It's much better than Winamp3 in terms of resources, and it's more simplistic. Also, if you want to watch videos, RealPlayer isn't so bad. I'm sure that if you searched on something like KaZaA that you could find some version of RealPlayer before it turned into RealPlayerOne.

 

[Shannon]

Originally posted by Viper Zero
XP is one problem. I wouldn't run XP on anything less than 900 MHz.

You can download Winamp3 and see how it runs. It is definitely faster than WMP 9, but it is a memory hog. If Winamp3 is too slow, try Winamp 2.9. It's the last version using Winamp's old code. It should be able to run on any system smoothly, even a 166 MHz can run it.

I wouldn't run XP on anything with less than 512mb of ram either. Although you can, XP runs a lot better with 512mb ram.

Also, Winamp 2.x > Winamp 3. I'm using WA3 at the moment but only because I couldn't be bothered installing 2.8.

 

[Acid X]

Or better yet, just get 98..

 

[Viper_Maniac]

Originally posted by Acid X
Or better yet, just get 98..

Or not.

 

[Apclps]

Originally posted by Eddy
I wouldn't run XP on anything with less than 512mb of ram either. Although you can, XP runs a lot better with 512mb ram.

I thought that windows only uses 256 mb RAM at the most??? It just doens't use more. Or am i wrong?!

I was told that any other extra RAM is only handy for the heavy graphical stuff.

grtz

PS, Winamp 2.81 is the best IMHO for playing mp3s and CDs

 

[Klostrophobic]

Heh, I run XP on a 566 MHz, 128 MB RAM Celeron. Runs fine for me.

Stick with Winamp 2.9. It can play videos now.

 

[milefile]

Microsoft and Intel jack eachother off. Sick.

 

[Klostrophobic]

Cool.

 

[BMW POWER]

well i downloaded version 2.8 of winamp and its just as bad so i though ***k it ive had enough of this comp so am buying a new one this weekend, thanks for the help and suggestions everyone

 

[Klostrophobic]

So get 2.9. My computer isn't as good as your computer and it runs fine.

 

[BMW POWER]

yeh but i needed a new computer for a while so i'll just get one this weekend and maybe keep the one i got now as storage

 

[Shannon]

Get someone to build a computer for you. It's cheaper than buying from an electronics store, plus you get to choose the parts. You can probably salvage some of your old part like the CD-Rom to save a bit of money too.

 

[Shannon]

Originally posted by Apclps
I thought that windows only uses 256 mb RAM at the most??? It just doens't use more. Or am i wrong?!

I was told that any other extra RAM is only handy for the heavy graphical stuff.

grtz

PS, Winamp 2.81 is the best IMHO for playing mp3s and CDs

You can run it off 256mb of ram, but the recommended amount of ram to run XP is 512mb. Windows 95 through to Windows ME, the recommended amount of rami s 256. 2000 and XP, the recommended amount is 512mb.

 

[Apclps]

Thanx for clearing that up.

XP can run fine though on 128 megs of RAM. I mean, when I got my PC, it allready had XP installed on it from the factory (Dell, 1.2 ghz, 128MB ram). I had no problems with that and it ran fine but it lacked a bit of power for gamez so we added 256MB to the 128MB of RAM and it runs sweeeet now.

But isn't 512 MB the limit of what you need?! Especially when you aren't talking about SD RAM but about the faster types. So whats the point in getting 1028 megs of ram, just a dumb (and expensive!) option in my eyes?

grtz

 

[Apclps]

Oh yeah, BMW POWER, about the winamp thingy. Maybe you should just try to format your PC (if it really is that slow).

Winamp 2.81 runs fine on my old P1 233mhz with 48 Megs of ram I can even keep it playing in the background when playing [not very new] games.

grtz

 

[Klostrophobic]

Originally posted by Apclps
So whats the point in getting 1028 megs of ram, just a dumb (and expensive!) option in my eyes?

grtz

Err, so you can run more programs simultaneously. Say you wanted to encode a movie and burn a CD at once. I'd take a gig of RAM. What'd it cost a hundred bucks?

 

[Shannon]

Originally posted by Apclps
Thanx for clearing that up.

XP can run fine though on 128 megs of RAM. I mean, when I got my PC, it allready had XP installed on it from the factory (Dell, 1.2 ghz, 128MB ram). I had no problems with that and it ran fine but it lacked a bit of power for gamez so we added 256MB to the 128MB of RAM and it runs sweeeet now.

But isn't 512 MB the limit of what you need?! Especially when you aren't talking about SD RAM but about the faster types. So whats the point in getting 1028 megs of ram, just a dumb (and expensive!) option in my eyes?

grtz

Well, games are becoming more and more dependant on high end machines. 512mb of DDR333 will run games fine, but a little extra wouldn't hurt. Also, ram is fairly cheap and lots of people work of the principle - the more the merrier when it comes to computers.

And as Klos said, with more ram - you can run multiple programs at the one time. Real time video editing, CD burning and 3D rendering probably use more ram than anything else. 1GB of ram wouldn't go a stray there.

 

[Shannon]

Originally posted by Apclps
Oh yeah, BMW POWER, about the winamp thingy. Maybe you should just try to format your PC (if it really is that slow).

Winamp 2.81 runs fine on my old P1 233mhz with 48 Megs of ram I can even keep it playing in the background when playing [not very new] games.

grtz

I glad you added 'not very new' in there.

 

[Thio]

I hope he means defrag ....

 

[Apclps]

Defragmenting may help a bit (especially if you have never done it before, or if you do it once a year).

But if your PC is that old and you have been using it constantly and have NEVER formatted it, then you will be amazed how fast a "clean" computer is. Windows attracts a lot of unneeded data over the years and using the internet can clog it up with spyware and such.

If it is possible to format your PC then do it. Just make a back-up, but otherwise it could indeed be a good idea to get a new PC. This one seems to have served you well for a long time

grtz

 

[Shannon]

If you don't run Disk Cleanup fairly often, your Temporary Files folder can grow to massive size also. You can free up hunderds of mb by emptying out the Temporary Files.

 

[BMW POWER]

thanks for the suggestions i've had the PC a good 4 years so it hasn't been bad considering the way i abuse it and fill it with crap
i've formated the hard drive about 3 weeks ago and it did help considerably but i think its time to move on and buy something a little more up to date

 

[Masterblaster]

Originally posted by BMW POWER
hi when i'm on the PC i like listening to music but i find that windows media player considerably lags everything down, i havent got a very powerful computer with only a 500mhz AMD and 344mb of RAM. i was wondering if Winamp would be more friendly on my slow PC, if so what version would you recommend?
cheers for any help
by the way i'm using XP Pro if that makes a difference

Need more free ram