[MPlayer-users] Mplayer performance on Upgraded PowerBook Wallstreet

[larrystotler at netscape.net]

hello everyone.  I have a question about playback performance on my 
son's PowerBook.  I just upgraded the cpu from the stock 233Mhz G3 w/ 
no L2 cache to a Powerlogix G3/466 w/ 1MB L2 cache.  Considering that 
my Thinkpad 390X w/ a P-III 450Mhz can play xvids with no problems, I 
was really dissapointed to see the playback with this new processor on 
the PowerBook.  Even Mpeg2 playback is jerky and unwatchable.  I have 
completely recomplied everything(yasm, xvid, x264, libmad, mp3lame, 
libavcodecs, Mplayer - in that order) with the same results in case 
their was a significant difference in the processors with the same 
results.  Now, the onboard video is evidently a PCI based version of 
the ATI Rage LT pro with 4MB VRAM, and the sound is the stock Apple.  I 
even removed the sound modules and tried running Mplayer to see if it 
was the audio driver and no luck.  So, my question is:

Is the laptop capable of playing movies without the hardware Cardbus 
decoder card?

Would it help if I had a G4 w/ the Alltivec support instead of the G3?

Would I be better off with a newer powerbook, like a Lombard or Pismo, 
or even a G3 iBook?  Or a G4?  a PowerBook with an AGO graphics 
adapter(my Thinkpad 390X is a Neomagic 256/AGP 1x with 2.5MB VRAM)  Mt 
Thinkpad 600 P-II 300Mhz was actually better than this G3/466 and it 
had PCI video as well(although still really unwatchable).

I am running openSuSE v10.0 with GCC 4.02 as the compiler and the newer 
Mplayer1.0pre8.  openSuSE v10.1 will not install on this machine.

Any help would be greatly appriciated.  Thanx