[mythtv-users] Where to put the power..

[Brian Guilfoos]

Rich West wrote:
> For what it is worth, I have a backend with three PVR-150's on a AMD 754 
> Athlon64 3000 with only 512MB of RAM (I have another 512MB stick I am 
> considering throwing in there, but I just don't see the need just yet) 
> and three frontends with AMD 754 Sempron64 3000's and 512MB RAM (each).  
> All of the systems seem to be rather bored with SD (especially the BE), 
> and, after seeing some recent posts about *not* using the Sempron 3000's 
> with HD, I started to get curious..

My backend is an AMD Athlon 850 with 640MB RAM and a PVR-500 and two
A180 HD cards.  I don't do any commflagging or transcoding there (I do
that on the Athlon64 3000+ frontend with 1GB RAM, which just barely gets
the job done).  It handles recording three streams no problem, and I'm
sure has enough left over to handle the other PVR-500 encoder when I
turn that on.

It can take the frontend a little while to chew thru the job queue on a
heavy recording evening (*especially* if I'm watching HD), but I tend to
lag behind by about a week on most shows anyway, so it catches up
overnight.  My biggest problem is that my fileserver machine doesn't
have enough RAM, and I get I/O waits when it swaps which can cause
glitches in recording and playback, so I've got another GB of RAM on the
way.

But for pure recording, my backend machine is more than adequate.