[mythtv-users] 32 or 64 Bit

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Laurence Huizinga
<lhuizinga at iinet.net.au> wrote:
> I have a slightly noob question about this 32/64 bit idea.  I have a Pentium
> D 830 and am running 64 bit Archlinux and MythTV.  This works ok, but my cpu
> gets a little warm and the fan too noisy for my liking.  I have two tv
> cards, a DVICO Fusion Lite HDTV and a Leadtek Winfast DTV1000T.  I think I
> am right in saying that these cards have 32 bit interfaces.
>
> Therefore, if I change over to 32 bit Linux on this system, where the main
> cpu task is to decode dvb (to decode with one cpu perhaps and watch or
> decode another stream with the other core) from these cards, Would I get
> better performance or should I stick with 64-bit??
>
> The reason I ask is that this CPU is not "pure" 64 bit from what I have
> read, but still works ok in my estimation.
> Larry

If by any chance this is an older PC I will relate a story that just
happened here....

I run Gentoo which means lots of compiling. My wife's PC had started
making more and more fan noise as I was doing updates so I opened it
up and found that the CPU fan was fairly clogged with lint and dust
which didn't surprise me too much as I've cleaned it every so often -
once a year or so. However this time it continued to make noise so I
pulled the whole CPU heat sink out, removed the fan thinking I'd need
to replace it. What I found what that the fan had driven so much lint
into the heat sink itself such that there was absolutely no air going
between the fins. You could hold the heat sink metal up to a light and
not see ANY light gettign through. I ended up washing the heat sink
with water, reattaching the fan, and reinstalling the whole assembly
with a little Arctic Silver. Now the machine compiles for hours and
very little extra fan noise.

Just a story...

- Mark