The reverse link signal power required for multimedia traffic in multipath faded single-code (SC-) and multi-code CDMA (MC-CDMA) systems is investigated. The effect of orthogonality loss among multiple spreading code channels is herein characterized by the orthogonality factor. The required signal power in both the CDMA systems is then analyzed consiering varying system parameters including spreading bandwidth, the orthogonality factor, and the number of spreading codes. Analytical results show that the required signal power in the CDMA systems significantly increases as the orthogonality factor and spreading bandwidth decrease. Furthermore, MC-CDMA users require power levels approximately identical to SC-CDMA users when multimedia traffic utilizes a wide bandwidth. The results can be used in the design of radio resource management (e.g., power allocation) schemes for wireless multimedia systems.