Video Card Upgrade for multiple MVPs?

[Brian]

I'm new to Sage and have a hardware question for the Sage pros out there...

I have SageTV running quite well on an WinXP box that I also intend to use as a server for two MVP units. The server will run two instances of SageClient (and Matt's MVP Client) in addition to SageTV, which I use to watch TV locally.

My hardware includes an Athlon 1.2, 1 GB RAM, PVR-250 and my trusty old TNT2 video card with 32MB. While Sage works just fine locally, I'm concerned that the additional load from the two clients will bring my system to its knees, particularly because the video card is outdated and does not natively support DX9.

So, my question is, will the clients (which will be streaming the encoded video to the MVP units) benefit from an updated video card? I don't want to lose the ability to use the SageTV server instance to watch TV locally on that machine.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts...

Brian

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Brian

So, my question is, will the clients (which will be streaming the encoded video to the MVP units) benefit from an updated video card? I don't want to lose the ability to use the SageTV server instance to watch TV locally on that machine.

Nope, it won't help with the clients since by using the UI/OSD plugin 3D accelleration is disabled. However, a new card may benefit your SageTV instance.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by Brian

My hardware includes an Athlon 1.2, 1 GB RAM, PVR-250 and my trusty old TNT2 video card with 32MB. While Sage works just fine locally, I'm concerned that the additional load from the two clients will bring my system to its knees, particularly because the video card is outdated and does not natively support DX9.

Brian

The TNT will work just fine... the 'real' issue comes into play with the RAM. Each instance consumes roughly 80meg... With 1 gig, you should be fine. The Athy 1.2 (gig?) should work ok as well... I have a 2800 which works great. I would not try to multitask too much... If you run it as a server, then you should be just fine... disable all the 'extra' stuff on xp to save a few cycles...

-Jason

[jptaz]

Jason,

How CPU intensive is the MVP Client(s) that you recommend not multitasking too much? Will it be a struggle for a AMD XP 2000+ to Record 4 Shows simultaneously, Watch a recording and have 2 active MVP Clients?

Right now my system only has 512 MB Ram, but I am thinking about adding more if that will help.

Thanks,
John