[mythtv-users] Upgrading CPU

[Kevin Hulse]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 02:05:46AM -0500, Javier Perez wrote:
> On 9/16/07, David Fishburn <dfishburn.mythtv at gmail.com> 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.
[deletia]
> As far as I understand, you just unplug the old CPU from the socket and
> plug-in the new
> CPU. Nothing more should change.

	That's exactly how it is. Linux picks up the change and happily uses the extra
cycles or core. While it is true that you need a faster core speed to get an improvement
in single execution times, what you do get is the ability to do more work at once without
bogging the system down as much. Total throughput will benefit from that.

> 
> I think, I would have to verify it, that Linux will automatically pick up
> the change in CPU next
> time that it reboots. If there is any additional optimization to do  to make
> Linux use both cores
> to the max I do not know yet.

	Nope, it's automatic. Unixen were using multiple cpus even before the first
version of Linux came out. Unix was originally a time sharing system, so it's quite
able to exploit multiple cpus by default.