[mythtv-users] setpci question

Tim Potter tpot at samba.org
Fri Apr 27 19:58:48 UTC 2007


On Fri, 2007-04-27 at 10:00 -0400, Brian Walter wrote:

> >     00:05.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller
> >     (rev a2)

> When I do recordings, I occasionally get dropped data from the encoder 
> (application not reading fast enough), plus, based on other research 
> related to IVTV DMA issues, having the disks at a lower latency than the 
> PVR cards has lead to issues for other users.

I had a similar problem with a couple of bt878-based capture cards and
the CK804 SATA controller (ASUS A8N-E).  When there was a lot of disk
activity like recording multiple shows at once and running xvid, there
would be dropouts in the recordings.  Very annoying.

For the record I tried playing with the PCI latency values using setpci
as well, but like you the values never changed.  The solution was to
replace the capture cards with cx2388x-based ones and I've never had any
problems since.

I think if you want decent, low latency disk access you need to go with
a motherboard that has a dedicated disk controller chip, not an
integrated solution like the nVidia chipsets.


Tim.


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