high CPU usage - poor performance

[tmschmal]

I have been using SageTV 5 for about a week now and while watching live TV or a recording my processor is utilized at over 80%, often at 100%. From what I've read in this forum it should be significantly lower than that.

My system is an AMD Athlon 1500+, 1GB RAM, 120GB partition (64K clusters), PVR-150, ATI RADEON 9250.

I've changed the settings to use the PVR-150 decoder, bt to no avail. I also changed the registry settings. What else should I look at, or would you cosider this much processor usage 'normal'? If SageTV takes nearly all of my processor, I'd hate to see it run on a 600Mhz pc as it claims it can.

Any help would be appreciated

[Opus4]

Are you using 3D Acceleration in Detailed Setup -> Advanced? What are your Renderer & Decoder settings in Detailed Setup -> Video/Audio?

Are you using 2 monitors? If so, do you have SageTV running on the Primary or on the Secondary monitor? (Found in Windows' Display Properties -> Settings.) DirectX (used for 3D Acceleration) runs best on the primary monitor.

- Andy

[tmschmal]

Yes, I am using 3D Acceleration.

Video Settings:
Video Renderer - VMR9
MPEG Decoder - Intervideo (latest version)
DXVA MPEG - Default
DXVA Deinterlacing - Default
DScaller - Disabled
Audio - Default
MPEG2 Audio decoder - AC3Filter


I had SageTV running in a window on my primary and they using Theatre Mode to send it full screen to a TV. I tried disabling the external TV and have it run only on my monitor, but it still utilized between 80-100% of the processer.

I have tried a variety of options in the Vidio/Audio setup, but what I listed is what I currently have.

Thanks for the help.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by tmschmal

Video Renderer - VMR9

I doubt you will be able to run VMR9 with an Athlon 1500+. Try Overlay instead.

Dirk

[blade]

Originally Posted by flachbar

I doubt you will be able to run VMR9 with an Athlon 1500+. Try Overlay instead.

Dirk

I don't know anything about ATI cards, but I run VMR9 with a 6600gt on an Athlon XP 2400 underclocked to 1300 mhz and cpu usage is around 50%.

I once had a client running VMR9 with a 6200 and an underclocked athlon XP running at 1100mhz.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by blade

I once had a client running VMR9 with a 6200 and an underclocked athlon XP running at 1100mhz.

Wow ...

I tried VMR9 with a 6200 (now back to my old MX4000 because of stability issues) on my 2.9 Ghz Celeron, and although it was much better than with the MX4000, it was still unusable ...

Dirk

[blade]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Wow ...

I tried VMR9 with a 6200 (now back to my old MX4000 because of stability issues) on my 2.9 Ghz Celeron, and although it was much better than with the MX4000, it was still unusable ...

Dirk

Unless you have something wrong any limitations with your 6200 should be video card related not cpu. VMR9 is very demanding on the video card.

[autoboy]

Does the 9250 support VMR9? It supports DxVA acceleration but it is based on older DX8 hardware. Isn't VMR9 part of DX9? That might be your problem right there. A 1500+ should have no problem watching recorded content. You might switch to a 9600. They are DirectX 9 and worked well with my Athlon at 1Ghz. You can find one cheap on ebay or maybe some friend will just give one to you. Thats how I got my 9600xt and it worked great even for HD content. A nvidia 5200 is another DX 9 card but i found it was not fast enough for VMR9 acceleration even in standard def.

[briands]

Is it the Sage.exe process that is taking the resources? I had a recent problem where whenever Sage was running (service actually) my server would grind to a halt. On processes tab on Taskmanager, the high CPU process was System. Searching the web pointed to an issue with a drive setting reverting to PIO mode. For me it was a "spare" drive that I am not even using. Check the Advanced settings tab for the IDE controlers in Device manager. Simply removing this spare drive was the answer for me. Obviously if it is a necessary drive, you'll have more work to do.

[briands]

Well,

Just go a new HDTV so I started trying to record HD again. I have added an HDHomerun and it seems to work OK when testing using the config utility and VLC.

The reason I am posting in this thread is because I see the HIGH CPU usage by the System process whenever recording (up to 40%) also the SageTVservice is pretty high (in the 40s).

Any thoughts on where to look?

BTW, this is a 2.6 Celeron w/ 1gig of Ram.

[davephan]

You did not mention if you are trying to use video compression and an MVP. When I had an Althlon XP 2800+, it had barely enough CPU to avoid stuttering when playing back Xvid AVI files to an MVP. The XP 2800+ normally ran at just under 100% CPU continueously when playing back compressed video. An Athlon XP 2100+ could not be used to playback compressed video since the video stuttering was very severe. I had 1 gig ram on those older computers.

You need to have more processing power than an Althlon XP 1500+ to run SageTV effectively. I chose to replace my old system with a dual-core 3.0 gig with 2 gigs of RAM. The fast dual-core never has problems, even while compressing video, playing back compressed video, and recording something else at the same time.

For the value that SageTV bring to your television experience, it my be worth it to put more computer resources to handle the task. When I switched to a fast dual core from the old Althon XP 2800+, the performance increase was very drastic.


Dave

[John@TunerUK]

I had a similar problem with one of my client machines. Athlon 1.8ghz, and the only thing that wouldn't stutter was DVD's, everything else used 100% CPU. I swapped from VMR9 to an intervideo codec and it's now back down to roughly 25-30%

[briands]

Originally Posted by davephan

You did not mention if you are trying to use video compression and an MVP. When I had an Althlon XP 2800+, it had barely enough CPU to avoid stuttering when playing back Xvid AVI files to an MVP. The XP 2800+ normally ran at just under 100% CPU continueously when playing back compressed video. An Athlon XP 2100+ could not be used to playback compressed video since the video stuttering was very severe. I had 1 gig ram on those older computers.

You need to have more processing power than an Althlon XP 1500+ to run SageTV effectively. I chose to replace my old system with a dual-core 3.0 gig with 2 gigs of RAM. The fast dual-core never has problems, even while compressing video, playing back compressed video, and recording something else at the same time.

For the value that SageTV bring to your television experience, it my be worth it to put more computer resources to handle the task. When I switched to a fast dual core from the old Althon XP 2800+, the performance increase was very drastic.


Dave

Nope, I get this even if I am not viewing ANYTHING from the server and only recording 1 HD stream.

I recently blew apart my RAID 3 array because I thought it was the bottle neck. Now I have my drives on multiple cards. Still seemed to do OK on 4 simultaneous SD streams, but one HD stream and CPU pegs the entire time.

Anyone know of a test of the drive subsystem... maybe something is going bad with one of the drives.

I'm using the BDA drivers for the HDHomerun... would there be any performance benefit to using the network encoder approach instead?

I can't risk getting the HD extender until I get the server side straightened out.

[briands]

Originally Posted by John@TunerUK

I had a similar problem with one of my client machines. Athlon 1.8ghz, and the only thing that wouldn't stutter was DVD's, everything else used 100% CPU. I swapped from VMR9 to an intervideo codec and it's now back down to roughly 25-30%

I am not having probs with playback (well except as impacted by the recording).

[flavius]

Originally Posted by briands

..
I'm using the BDA drivers for the HDHomerun... would there be any performance benefit to using the network encoder approach instead?

I can't risk getting the HD extender until I get the server side straightened out.

You want to use BDA drivers. Encoding from this device over the network is no longer supported.

Something's going on with your RAID (what was that for in the first place) and /or your hardware.

[briands]

Originally Posted by flavius

You want to use BDA drivers. Encoding from this device over the network is no longer supported.

Something's going on with your RAID (what was that for in the first place) and /or your hardware.

Thanks!

I originally got into the raid to simplify life after a couple drive failures. I have blown up the RAID 3 and switched to individual drives each with a recording directory assigned and a 2 disc RAID 1 for the photos, music and some ripped movies (not as back up, but just to reduce the likelihood of needing to re-rip the collection.)

Maybe I should pull the RAID card completely and see how that goes.

Other than actual recordings, is there a good (preferably free or cheap) test for drive transfers that represents multiple streams writing and reading simultaneously?

Lastly, I guess I'll probably get to the point I will want to replace the SATA card... Any recommendations? I'd prefer at least 6 ports (8 would be super) on a PCI card. Don't plan to use raid.

Thanks!

[flavius]

You should try the hardware forum.