[mythtv-users] Is the GUI slow for everyone or just for me?

[Maarten]

On Thursday 27 May 2004 04:57, mark wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 May 2004 08:16 pm, Maarten wrote:
> > I don't know if I can help...  can you benchmark and compare it to
> > something ? By doing a kernelcompile maybe ?
>
> I could do that perhaps.  A little busy right now.  Spring and all.

me too

>   Does bonnie++ uncover any
>
> > obvious weak spots ?
>
> don't have any benchmarking stuff downloaded.  Recommendations?

Not really.  Benchmarking is mostly for people who want to brag, and I have no 
interest in that.  Well, try out the iostat tool I mentioned.  Run 'iostat 2' 
for an overview of both CPU and disk activity, refreshing evey 2 secs.

BTW: Kernel compiles ARE a good benchmark.  It will uncover memory errors (as 
a bonus) and it is both CPU and disk intensive.  For still more fun, try it 
with 'make -j5  ' and see your load go way up. :-)

>  Have you overclocked it ?
>
> Nope, pure stock.
>
>   What does acpi report back
>
> > as system / CPU temperatures ?
>
> runs about 47C under full load.  BIG solid copper heatsink and 80mm slow
> fan (quiet).

Hey, exact same temp as mine. I use a zalman cooler.

> > You may also want to verify in your BIOS that CPU internal caches are ON.
>
> All caches are on.
>
> > And of course, the obvious -but you checked that I hope- hdparm DMA mode.
>
> hdparm showed about 47Mb/sec.  Decent.

Instead of only setting DMA mode with -d, maybe check these four settings:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
They all help.  DISCLAIMER: read the manpage since some of these settings may 
corrupt data if you are very unlucky and have a problematic chipset...! 
(You have been warned)

> > For more technically inclined people, it may be insightful to run iostat
> > or other tools from the sysstat suite to see where exactly the bottleneck
> > is.
>
> Not familiar with that tool.

Simple. Start by just running iostat <number>

> > Failing all that, if you remind me in a couple weeks (too busy now) we
> > can directly compare my system to yours. Mine is an athlon 2600+, VIA
> > KT600, 256MB, kernel 2.4 running Myth 0.14, so it is more or less
> > comparable to yours (except RAM). It has no slowness and encodes straight
> > to mpeg4 with many CPU cycles to spare (resolution 480x480 @ bitrate
> > 3000).
>
> I was using slightly higher encode settings.  544x480, 4000bitrate.  Real
> nice clean digital satellite signal.

I have compromised between diskusage and quality, and it needs further 
experimenting.  But I have worse problems, some of my favorite channels have 
severe interference which cannot be solved by tuning... But my TV shows a 
fine picture: it must be the TVcard. :-((

Maarten

-- 
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding hardware.