[mythtv-users] Upgrading CPU

Raphael rpooser at gmail.com
Sun Sep 16 20:15:38 UTC 2007


David Fishburn wrote:
> On 9/16/07, Javier Perez <pepebuho at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have an Asus M2NPV-VM Motherboard with 1GB Ram and an AMD 64 3500 cpu
> 
> 
> I have the same motherboard and CPU.
> 
> Currently, I am only running SD, but I am considering buying a new
> television and that would entail getting some HD content.
> 
> I was transcoding movies yesterday at it takes my machine 2 hours to
> transcode a 2 hour show.  I thought it has to do it at the playback
> speed in order to match the audio to the video.  The other post on
> this thread indicates it was taking 15 minutes for a 1 hour show (ah,
> I guess that was just for commflagging, not transcoding).
> 
> How much are the new X2 chips and what does it involve putting in a
> faster CPU to the MO?  Does it have to be soldered?  Does it just clip
> in?  Do any OS changes have to happen?  I am running Ubuntu Edgy.
> 
> TIA,
> Dave
> _______________________________________________


No it doesn't have to be soldered. You buy the cpu by itself, take off 
your old heatsink and then remove the old cpu, drop the new cpu into the 
socket (literally, it should take no pressure to put the cpu pins into 
the socket), and then replace the heatsink back onto the new cpu. 
Optionally if you bought the new cpu retail and it came with a heatsink, 
you can use that one instead of the old one.

That is all that it entails, you don't need to make any changes on the 
software side in your OS or anything like that, unless you want to 
upgrade to an smp kernel and set up some other software to be 
multithreaded; but otherwise it shouldn't break anything. You just drop 
it in and your computer is faster. Only gotcha is the case where the 
motherboard bios doesn't support the particular chip you buy. Then you 
might have to flash the bios to enable support for it. That will not be 
happening if you buy an X2 right now most likely, with a motherboard as 
recent as that one. If you wait till the end of the year for Phenom, 
which should fit into socket AM2 I believe, then Asus will probably 
release a bios flash to support the new processors.

Socket AM2 (which is what you have) dual cores are dirt cheap right now. 
Below $100 to get the same clock speed as what you have now with double 
the cores. As someone else said, if you're trying to actually get it to 
speed up the transcoding of a single file, the only thing that helps 
there is clock speed until, and if, the transcoders become 
multithreaded. So if you buy a dual core at the same 2.2GHz speed you 
have now, look for approximately zero performance increase in 
transcoding. However, another benefit to upgrading maybe to get a 65nm 
processor if you have a 90nm right now; in order to run cooler and quieter.

Remember, you have socket AM2, according to the specs for that mobo, so 
don't buy socket 939.

Raphael


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