Processor Choice?

[PeteCress]

I've got my SageTV server running on an old P4/2.79GHz with a meg of memory.

I'm considering moving it to an AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 3800 running at 2.01 GHz with 896 mb of RAM.

Question: Will I see any major drop in performance? I'm thinking in terms of the P4's single processor and Sage's ability(?) to use both of the Athlon's cores.

Also, if no red flags go up, will bumping the memory up to two gigs help any?

[gplasky]

Tough to say and what you mean by "major". You're giving up 3/4 of a GHz in speed. And except for transcoding and comskip Sage doesn't make much use of multi-processors. You'll have to test it and see. By the way, I would up the memory to 2GB regardless of what processor you use. That way you can set the jvm for a higher number depending on how many extenders you run at once and still have plenty of RAM left for all the other Sage chores.

Gerry

[mistergq]

are you viewing HD?

I have a client that is single core running HD with the help of the arcsoft codex, but that is a client. I am not sure I would do that with the server, especially if the server is also being used to watch recordings.

[davephan]

I recommend starting with 2 gigs RAM. Several years ago I started with 512 Meg, which wasn't enough, since the computer was caching to disk 24 x 7. I increased it to 1 gig, and that made a huge difference in performance. My newer Sage TV computer has 2 gigs RAM, which improves the performance and gives me some spare overhead RAM. My normal physical memory consumption normally runs between 800 megs and 1200 megs.

A fast 3.0 gig dual-core or quad-core helps a lot if you are processing files with Comskip or ShowAnalyzer, or compressing videos, or running VideoReDo batch editing jobs.

Your signature line says your looking for plugin recommendations. I recommend the web server, Comskip and/or ShowAnalyzer, DirMon2, and the Roxy99 scripts for compressing SD videos with the two pass method. A good companion program is VideoReDo for editing the MPEG2 files.


Dave

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Tough to say and what you mean by "major". You're giving up 3/4 of a GHz in speed.

True but an Athlon 64 is way faster clock for clock than a P4.

And except for transcoding and comskip Sage doesn't make much use of multi-processors.

Aside from those it doesn't make much use of a single processor either

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by gplasky

jvm

?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

?

java virtual machine. With 2GB of RAM you can raise the jvm heap size (memory for the java virtual machine) higher which usually results in better performance for the menus and other things at the HD extenders. Some start it at 512 to up to 1024. Serach the forums-it's a registry setting)

Gerry

EDIT: It referenced in this post jvm heap edit