[mythtv-users] Compelling reasons to go 64bit?

[Yeechang Lee]

Chris Ribe <chrisribe at gmail.com> says:
> I'm considering switching my myth box to x86_64 when I upgrade to
> FC6.  Is there any compelling reason to do this yet?  It has a 3Ghz
> P4 which handles HD playback quite nicely with hyper threading
> turned on.

As David Letterman occasionally says about some miscreant in the news,
"It's like I have a *twin*!" I recently rebuilt my 3.0GHz Pentium
4-with-EMT64 MythTV box from scratch (except the recordings and
database) due to some non MythTV-related reasons, and in the process
went from 32-bit Fedora Core 4 to 64-bit Fedora Core 6.

I unfortunately cannot say whether the move in and of itself made any
performance improvements because I also, at about the same time, a)
added a local drive for recording in addition to the NAS I've been
using all along, and b) added some manual patches to the 0.20-fixes
ATrpms SRPM to boost the ringbuffer size. However, as far as I can
see, there is no reason *not* to make the move either if you are
comfortable with the process; that is, there is no disadvantage with
going 64-bit (except with things like lack of a 64-bit Flash plugin
for Web browsers, which of course has nothing to do with MythTV and in
any case is irrelevant for me), and--perhaps--advantages to gain.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US