[mythtv-users] Upgrade old or cut my losses and buy new?

[Steven Adeff]

On 3/4/07, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> On Mar 4, 2007, at 6:22 PM, Yan Seiner wrote:
> > Steven Adeff napsal(a):
> >> If your motherboard supports it, you can try overclocking the
> >> Sempron,
> >> you probably don't need much to get it decoding 1080i.
> >
> >    I tried that.  Seems that the limitation isn't the CPU clock
> > cycles,
> > it's the pitiful cache that AMD put on the chip (128K L2 and no L1).
> > Basically, the CPU spins its wheels waiting on data.  More wheel
> > spinning isn't going to help.  :-(
> >
> > Also, that mobo has only one stick of DDR400 memory.  Would there
> > be any
> > advantage to a second stick?  (Other than more ram, of course.)  The
> > system has 512MB RAM.  If I can improve performance for < $100 well
> > enough to run HD, I'll be happy.
>
> 1GB RAM would of course be nice but if you're not doing anything else
> it should be enough for playback, use free or top to see if you're
> swapping excessively though.
>
> If you *really* want to know more about RAM and HD decoding check out:
>
> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chenhan/papers/icme2002t.pdf
>
> A bit out of date but the concepts are of course still valid.
>
> I seriously doubt that CPU will do what you want though.

yea, I'm gunna have to agree with Brian here (per usual...). I would
assume a 3000+ on a frontend only machine should be fine for HD,
though I wonder if its enough to enable Bob during playback? I've got
a 3200+ for my frontend which runs fine so it would not be surprising
if the 3000+ works. I actually overclock mine to 2.5GHz (as of now)
and I get 1080i + Bob for about 70% cpu usage.

Definitely no need to go to a dual core machine for a frontend, save
the money and get a 3000 or 3200, any core newer than and including
the Venice cores are great overclockers as well. Check around on
pricing, I've seen Venice core 3200+'s for less than Orelans core
3000+'s with no significant operating difference. Use some of the
"saved" money to get another 512MB stick to get to 1GB of ram,
swapping is "the devil" ;-)

-- 
Steve
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