[mythtv-users] AMD Issues

Matt White whitem at arts.usask.ca
Mon Jan 31 23:42:52 EST 2005


I've had MythTV running for over a year now, and I'm very happy with it.
I finally got rid of the ugly tower box sitting beside my TV and built
a new system for myth MythBox.  I had been running a P4 - 1.8 GHz with
two PVR-250s and a pair of 120 GB drives (JBOD'd with LVM2).  For the
new system, I picked up an MSI nForce board (heard good things about
nForce chipsets) and an Athlon 3000+ (Barton).  The new machine is using
one of the old 120 GB drives plus a 200 GB SATA, again using LVM2.
Compiles are definitely MUCH faster on the new machine, but Myth is
taking up WAY more resources.

Distro:	Gentoo (optimized for athlon-xp)
Myth Version: CVS 2004-Dec-11
Video Card:  GeForce MX4000

On my old P4, recording two streams and watching one ran at about 50-60%
cpu utilization.  On the new AMD, the same thing takes 100%+.  If I am
watching something when there are two recordings, everything is
extremely sluggish.  I'm running the same Myth and IVTV code on the new
one as I was on the old one (it was working, why screw with it?).

I would have thought even just by CPU frequency alone (2.1 GHz opposed
to 1.8 GHz) it should be close, and frequency isn't everything...

Does anyone have any idea why this new (supposedly better) system
behaves so much worse with Myth than the old one?  The only thing I
can think of is that the IO system on the nForce board is slow (maybe
just the SATA?), since it seems like I'm iobound.

On the positive side, the SilverStone LC03 case is really nice, and
looks cool in the stereo stand.

Any ideas/suggestions are appreciated...

-- 
Matt White			whitem at arts.usask.ca
College of Arts and Science
University of Saskatchewan


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