[mythtv-users] Memory performance on Nvidia ION

[Paul Bender]

On 2/22/2011 4:08 PM, Mark wrote:
> Hi jya,
>>
>>   All i know is that one stick was not sufficient to not cause issues and
>>   stuttering at times and i couldnt use tvdpau normal profile. Adding a
>>   secong
>>   helped but upping the memory bsticks to the max recommended for the zotac
>>   ion a board and putting two of them in there helped a lot with visual
>>   quality.
>>
>>   As the other poster said. Suggest buying a matched stick, or swapping your
>>   single stick for dual 1gb sticks... and trying and do please report back
>>   here.
>>
>
> I think the drivers have a LOT to do with this.  I recently updated my
> Zotac ION frontend from an older Mythbuntu installation with Nvidia 175
> series drivers to debian squeeze with Nvidia 260 driver and had a LOT of
> video buffer issues, enough that caused it to start stuttering and causing
> an echo effect over time.  It played PERFECT with vdpau before i used the
> new install.  Last night I updated to 270 beta drivers and it helped a
> little, but still not perfect.  And I've ALWAYS had 2 x 1MB sticks in the
> thing.  The ONLY thing that changed on that Zotac was the software
> installed.

 From feedback that I have received on the MiniMyth forum, NVIDIA's 
binary drivers, other run time software (especially Xorg and Linux), 
compile time software (especially gcc and binutils) and compile time 
options (especially optimizations (including link time optimizations)) 
can all impact the performance of ION systems using the NVIDIA's binary 
drivers. As a result, I have found it challenging to bisect performance 
problems with the MiniMyth distribution when multiple packages (not to 
mention the MiniMyth version) have be updated.

Personally, I do not have a problem with the NVIDIA 260.19.36 driver on 
my ION platform (containing 2GB of memory with 0.5GB dedicated to video) 
(and running software targeted (and tuned) for pentium-mmx with gcc's 
-Os optimization and some link time optimization). However, I have the 
advantage of being able to back out any changes that have caused me 
problems.