[mythtv-users] Recommended CPU speed

[Billy Macdonald]

--- Mitko Haralanov <voidtrance at comcast.net> wrote:
> I am trying to decide what speed CPU to get for my future MythTV box. I
> have been reading the different guides an list archives but I am still
> kind of confused.
> 
> I am planning on getting the CHAINTECH 7NIF2 motherboard (and using the
> hw mpeg decoder of the onboard GeForce4 MX). I am also planning on
> purchasing a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 and a AVerMedia M179 (I want to be
> able to record two streams at the same time). I plan to use the PVR-250
> for recording and the remote interface.
> 
> Since all the encoding and decoding of the streams will be done in
> hardware, I am not going to need that fast of a CPU. However, I am going
> to be encoding 2 streams and decoding 1, all at the same time.
> 
> I am planning on getting an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) CPU. Do you
> think that this would be over- or underkill.
> 
> 	I appreciate any help!! Thanx! 
> -- 
> Mitko Haralanov

Well as a reference I have 3 PVR 250's, XP 2000, 512MB RAM & MX440. CPU
utilization while recording is negligible.  I have an Athlon XP 2000, but
clocked with PC100 RAM so it's more like a XP 1600 :)  (Some weird instability
with two chips of PC133 RAM)  It uses about 32% CPU during playback of my
default 5MB/s 704x480 recordings.  That number doesn't really change if I'm
recording stuff at the same time or not.  That's with the deinterlacing option
turned on.  CPU drops if I turn that off but output is ugly, not sure of by how
much, can't remember.

I did setup XvMC to utilize the hardware decoding of the MX440 and CPU
utilization dropped dramatically, can't remember the exact number, sorry. 
However with XvMC I was unable to use the deinterlacing filter and that caused
the output on my TV to look crappy.  Couldn't figure out how to send the pure
interlaced video to the TV so it would look ok.  Moral of story, buy enough CPU
so you don't have to rely on hardware decoding if it doesn't work well for you
either.

Billy

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