[mythtv-users] HD Woes (so close to working, dual-channel RAM question)

[Nate Crosno]

Brian Wood wrote:
> On Feb 3, 2007, at 8:10 AM, Nate Crosno wrote:
> 
>> So my current question is how much of a difference does dual  
>> channel memory
>> make on a Mythtv system?  I am an idiot and did not realize I  
>> actually had a
>> 1gb and a 512mb stick and not 2x512.  In the bios on startup, it  
>> says it's
>> running in single channel mode.
>>
> 
> I suspect it would not make much if any difference, Myth is not a  
> memory access intensive application.
> 

OK, thanks for the input. My searches returned lots of conflicting information. 
Some claiming nothing and some claiming the moon.

> You didn't mention what model mobo you're using but if it allows it  
> you might try overclocking a bit, even a 10% O/C can sometimes help.
> 
> A lot of the Jetway boards have VIA chipsets which have DMA and PCI  
> buss problems. You might look at your PCI latency values, adjusting  
> them made a big difference on a VIA-based board I was playing with a  
> year ago, though your CPU numbers sure sound like that's your problem.
> 

I'm using this board with Nnidia chipset:
JetWay J939GT3-PTD Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813153047


> Sounds like you know to have your Gentoo USE flags set to take  
> advantage of SMP and threading.

I do not have it set specifically for Mythtv, but it is enabled for the kernel.

> 
> Also check the obvious stuff like making sure you don't have anything  
> unnecessary running, you might also try a minimal X server, if you're  
> running something like KDE it can take up a lot more CPU than a  
> stripped down X server will.

I'm running blackbox.  While watching some 1080i content, mythfrontend was 
taking over 100% cpu on one core while X was running 10-15% on the other.

Thanks for the input.