[mythtv-users] What's better? 2.4 GHz P4 mobo or Dual 1.1 GHz PIII mobo?

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Tue Dec 26 18:52:32 UTC 2006


On Dec 26, 2006, at 11:33 AM, F Peeters (MythTV) wrote:

> On Tue, December 26, 2006 18:37, Brian Wood wrote:
>
>>
>> Obviously any single-threaded process will run faster on the P4, and
>> the advantages to be derived from the dual-CPU board would depend on
>> being able to take advantage of the multiple cores, and would include
>> your kernel, libraries etc. This is far from perfect today but will
>> improve with time. Even if the CPU "sharing" was perfect though, the
>> effective CPU speed would be slower on the dual PIIIs, not even
>> counting the CPU architecture issues.
>>
> I realize that... But when I add a PVR500, I can potentially have 3
> concurrent recordings, and thus 3 concurrent comflaggings... I  
> assume (and
> please somebody correct me if I am wrong) that those separate  
> comflaggings
> would be divided over the processors

More or less true. You can also spread the jobs over time by telling  
the system to only run one or two jobs at a time, and control the  
niceness level of them. Really depends on how much of a hurry you are  
in to watch a recording with the commls flagged. In my case it is  
usually several hours or days before I get around to watching a  
recording so flagging only 1 show at a time with a low priority is  
fine and this takes little CPU.

>
>> So by all counts the P4 board should be "better", plus it could be
>> upgraded to a dual or even a quad core CPU later.
>
> Negative on that... I have a 2.4 GHz P4 processor on Socket 478,  
> and do
> not have funds right now for both a new mobo *and* a new  
> processor... I
> got the Intel D865GLC board for free... I guess I know why now...  ;-)
>
>> But the main thing is that you say you already have the dual-PIII
>> board, and would have to buy the P4 one. Why not just try it and see
>> if it meets your needs? If it does then the question of whether a new
>> P4 board would be "better" is moot.
>
> True enough, however the Intel board had built in SATA interfaces  
> aside
> from the PATA... So I could have 6 devices connected. The Dual PIII
> doesn't have SATA, so I'd have to buy a SATA card... But future RAID
> enhancements would be SATA anyway, so that card probably would be  
> useful
> even if I had to get a new board with built in SATA later on...
>
> The only fear I have is that I will not be able to get Socket 478  
> boards
> at all any more...

I think the socket 478 boards will be available for quite a while, at  
least on the used/surplus market. Whether they are a smart investment  
is another matter though.

But again, just try with what you have and see how it goes before  
spending any $$$.


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