SageTV performance tweaks: What do you do to gain extra SageTV performance?

[doncote0]

Overclocking in particular is not something I would recommend for a stable, reliable, power-sipping media server.

While you are entitled to your opinion, it is just that (as is mine). As far as stability goes, my system is rock solid. As a matter of fact, my system makes less noise and has lower temperature than many of the systems that you would think of for your "stable, reliable, power-sipping media server".

Intel and AMD, do not necessarily agree with you (see stair stepping, turbo boost and unlocked multipliers). An overclocked system will usually use more power than one that is not overclocked, however (more power means more heat)--that part is accurate.

As for overclocking, I would not recommend it for anyone who does not feel they have the technical expertise to support it. In other words, if you think overclocking means melting CPU's, having constant instability and pushing the limits of a borderline power supply and stock CPU heatsink/fan, then I do not recommend you even attempt to spell overclock.

[doncote0]

That's the exact situation I was considering trying with my Sage server though if it can't be done reliably then it's definitely a no go.

It's good you are doing the research, Blade. Got to keep the WAF up.

RAMDisk is attractive for so many reasons. When I researched the options for it (by reading) on a 32bit system, I was disappointed by the mixed reviews from the reviewers and end users. PAE access above 4 GB was very inconsistent and seemed to introduce more instability than performance gain.

So, if you want to use a ramdisk for improving pagefile performance, get an SSD (they don't need them).

RAMDisk can be used for cached files and folders and temp internet redirect to greatly improve performance (without stressing your SSD wear-leveling). However, I recommend using RAMDisk to support the system with the RAM that you can spare and that has native OS support.

That is one of the reasons why I decided on a 64 bit OS during upgrade.

With that, there are a few good RAMDisk installations that can support up to 4GB RAMDisk for free (not Microsoft by the way).

Of course, you could always use a SSD for the OS and applications, and then use another SSD for the cache files and folders.

[blade]

Originally Posted by doncote0

That is one of the reasons why I decided on a 64 bit OS during upgrade.

I'm considering rebuilding my server and would prefer to go with a 64 bit OS in order to use more RAM, but that would mean replacing my old PVR-500 that is still used occasionally when my other tuners are busy. Between the cost of the OS and a new tuner it's just not worth it to me at the moment. My old server still does pretty well, but every now and then it does hit the swap file fairly hard.

[scoful]

While I haven't done this with my Sage stuff, I frequently configure servers to use an alternate disk for pagefile operations. Usually I'll add a drive for backup and put the pagefile on it since it's only being used during a backup - which is when nobody's there anyway. This makes paging a lot more efficient since the heads aren't moving back and forth between the pagefile and system/program files and data. It also reduces the wear on your primary drive.

I wish someone would produce an inexpensive and small drive like the RevoDrive - say 16 or 32 Gigs that has ultra fast access. At one point there was a device that was RAM based with a battery backup (except I don't know if it was even 16 Gigs). If you used that for paging it would make a big difference assuming your apps are using a lot of RAM (or native paging).

I have always thought a device like that would also be great as a storage area for hibernation data as well - allowing you to hibernate very quickly and wake up very quickly. Would be fantastic on a laptop - extending the battery time both during the prep for hibernation and wakeup, plus you'd be able to hibernate more frequently since it would be less annoying to wake it back up. (Sorry - that's quite the tangent).

Please note that as Fuzzy stated, ideally paging should be eliminated. It's unfortunate that Microsoft hasn't provided for a good method to avoid/eliminate it. It's clear that if you can operate with 2 Gigs of RAM with a 3 Gig pagefile without problems you should be able to operate with 5 Gigs of RAM and no pagefile!!

[seaverd]

I need some help with my Java Heap Setting. About 3 months ago I rebuilt my pc and at that time upgraded to 64 bit Windows 7 Pro. After reading this thread I realized that I never changed the Java Heap settings to 1024mb after the clean install. So I just made the change in the registry for the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\SageTV

However after a reboot when I go into the SageTV information it sill lists the max as 389.

I am running SageTv as a service. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Dan

[jorton]

Originally Posted by seaverd

I need some help with my Java Heap Setting. About 3 months ago I rebuilt my pc and at that time upgraded to 64 bit Windows 7 Pro. After reading this thread I realized that I never changed the Java Heap settings to 1024mb after the clean install. So I just made the change in the registry for the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\SageTV

However after a reboot when I go into the SageTV information it sill lists the max as 389.

I am running SageTv as a service. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Dan

Try the following tool,

http://babgvant.com/files/folders/sa...ntry12640.aspx

Works on my WIn 7 64 bit client and you just have to enter 1024 as the heap an then save. Might need a restart as well for the new reg setting to take effect, I did anyways.

J

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by seaverd

I need some help with my Java Heap Setting. About 3 months ago I rebuilt my pc and at that time upgraded to 64 bit Windows 7 Pro. After reading this thread I realized that I never changed the Java Heap settings to 1024mb after the clean install. So I just made the change in the registry for the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\SageTV

However after a reboot when I go into the SageTV information it sill lists the max as 389.

I am running SageTv as a service. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Dan

I just had this problem too... no matter what i did the settings would not stick.... if i ran sagetv as an admin then it worked fine... but when i ran it as a limited user (uac is enabled) then i had a problem... the problem was windows was virtualizing the registry entries... so look here

HKEY_USERS\<some long id>\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\SageTV

youll need to do some guessing on the <some long id>... each id corresponds to a user of the system... got the hint from here

i believe babgvant's tool that jorton linked too will work but you must run it as the user that starts sagetv (no uac credentials entry)... it wasn't working for me bc i always had to elevate my credentials to run it...

[seaverd]

Razorsharpe - my issue was identical to yours...I found the key you listed, made the change and everything worked great!!! Thanks!

I forgot to mention it in the original post.. like Razorsharpe I tried the tool and it worked under admin but not under the user.

[mkanet]

Although, disabling the page file seems to work for basic Windows machines as a great performance enhancement, it's not such a great idea for "any system" with lots of available RAM. If there were no issues related to disabling the pagefile, ask yourself this.. why dont all companies/IT specialists who rely on critical Windows based servers plenty of RAM decide against disabling their pagefiles? Although the pagefile is not used near as much as when a server has less RAM, there are still apps/services that were designed for Windows machines to have a swapfile. Doing a search on google, bing, etc. for "disabling Windows page file bad idea" will give countless specific experiences from people who realized its a bad idea for them; even with large amounts of available RAM.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

eliminating the swap file will work on any system.. as long as you have enough ram for what you want to do with he system. In days where you can relatively easily run systems with 16GB of RAM, the swap file is just a waste of time. (especially since, even WITH 16GB, windows will still try to swap things to disk).

[korben_dallas]

MSDN view of pagefile on an SSD:

MSDN Support Q&A for SSDs and Windows 7

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

•Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
•Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
•Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.
In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

[doncote0]

That is great info korben_dallas.

You could even reduce the wear on the SSD by fixing the pagefile to a certain size (like maybe up to 4096MB).

[mkanet]

Yes, that's exactly what I do. I think I mentioned that in my first post as well (which REALLY needs to be updated with all these great performace tweaks).

Originally Posted by doncote0

That is great info korben_dallas.

You could even reduce the wear on the SSD by fixing the pagefile to a certain size (like maybe up to 4096MB).

[bialio]

I do a QoS related tweak in my network that helps some. The gigabit switch I have in the wiring closet supports 802.1p tagging. So on my Sage server I set it so that all traffic from that PC to anywhere else in the network has the highest priority.

This of course requires hardware that supports this - my NIC in the server (realtek on the MB) does. And then you have to have an OS that lets you set the 802.1p priority. Win7Pro in this case. But I noticed a nice performance boost on the extenders especially once I did this.

btl.

[mkanet]

For those of you who have a an extreme number of files or subdirectories in a folder under Windows (for example, I have a porn folder with >30,000 pictures and phoenix central fanart movie folder with >4500 movies), the below tweak makes a significant difference on my Vista32 4GB PC; even on an SSD; which eliminates short pauses and brief sageTV spinning cursor when flipping through movie fanart backgrounds in the Upcoming Movies 2 plugin (which doesnt appear to use proprietary Diamond plugin caching system). I'm not sure how this would affect other people's setups; or what OS's; but it definitely made a noticeable difference on my PC; enough of a difference to make a post here. In fact, I didnt need to reboot; as the performance difference was instantaneous/obvious.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsMemoryUsage"=dword:00000002

I dont know the side effects of doing this; other than taking up a little more RAM. I haven't noticed any adverse affects. I've only used this tweak for a couple of days. This doesnt make much of a difference in proprietary diamond plugin phoenix cached folders; which has much, much less items than the phoenix central fanart storage. This is not related to Windows indexing service which is used for Windows file system searches.

[aedgington]

I've got my OS/system on a 15K SCSI drive.

Very fast, little/no CPU overhead. Obviously it's not an SSD, but it cost $50, and was built six or seven years ago -- before SSDs.

[mayamaniac]

Digging up an old thread, but just wanna share my experience.

I recently purchased a Crucial 64GB SSD for my server OS drive, and I agree, there is a noticeable performance boost from bootup, launching apps/windows, and moving/copying files. And there's a noticeable speed improvement with the extenders too, particularly the HD200. Scrolling seems smoother and fanart loads faster than before.

Originally Posted by mkanet

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsMemoryUsage"=dword:00000002

I dont know the side effects of doing this; other than taking up a little more RAM. I haven't noticed any adverse affects. I've only used this tweak for a couple of days. This doesnt make much of a difference in proprietary diamond plugin phoenix cached folders; which has much, much less items than the phoenix central fanart storage. This is not related to Windows indexing service which is used for Windows file system searches.

According to this guy's test, it makes no difference: http://www.tweakhound.com/blog/?p=1164

I did the tweak anyway as it doesn't seem to have a negative effect. So far, I can also see an improvement loading fanarts, the HD200 actually caches ahead of my scrolling, which it never could before.

I wish that the firewire STB driver has a 64bit version so that I can switch to Win7 64bit, that way I can get more than 4GB and maybe try to kill the pagefile and see if it can increase performance even more. But stuck on 3GB with 32bit OS, so for now, SSD is a nice improvement.