[mythtv-users] frontend hardware - any reason not to use ion?

[R. G. Newbury]

Johnny Walker wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Greg Oliver <oliver.greg at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 10:39 AM, Johnny Walker <johnnyjboss at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 9:56 AM, David Asher <asherml at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Jan 11, 2010, at 7:32 AM, Fred Squires wrote:
>>>>> A few tips:
>>>>> You'll need to go into the bios to increase the memory for the video
>>>>> card. With 1 GB you can only move it up to 256, I added an extra gig
>>>>> so I could go up to 512. I didn't notice any problems with 256, but I
>>>>> only tested a few videos.
>>>> I'll add/second that tip: if you want to use the pretty fanart, coverart,
>>>> etc, you NEED the 2GB.  At least in the current state, my mythfrontend
>>>> memory usage balloons quite easily, with 256MB allocated for video, 1GB just
>>>> doesn't hack it.  Add to that the reports that 256MB is borderline for
>>>> playback, 2GB is the way to go.  Luckily my two Revo 1600's both came with
>>>> only one SO-DIMM slot populated, so it was just adding another.  Kinda
>>>> tricky getting the case apart, however.
>>>>
>>>> I upgraded to 2GB and 512MB and everything works pretty well.  I did have to
>>>> set it up so every night mythfrontend restarts because the memory still
>>>> seems to get out of hand.  I haven't had a chance to debug why.  My theory
>>>> is the image cache doesn't get fanart/coverart images removed so it grows
>>>> continuously, but I haven't checked to code to see.
>>> I've got a stock Revo 1600 and I get aliasing problems when the image
>>> is panning - especially if there's a fence, prison bars, or vertical
>>> stripes of any sort in the picture.
>>>
>>> If I simply increase the ram to 2gb the bios will start allowing me to
>>> allocate 512 to the onboard video?
>>>
>> 1.5 GB total ram will let you allocate 512 to video.  I found that 3GB
>> total makes it run without swap for the most part.  Without any
>> capture devices present..
> 
> Any tips on how to determine what ram it takes? I usually use pc-info
> on my friends windows boxes.

Lots of talk about the bundled units, but Asus also make the "AT3NA7" 
motherboard, based on the Atom + nvidia combo, which has a PCI slot. 
That would allow using USB or network attached tuners as well as 
Hauppauge PVR. Priced at about $170 but probably coming down in price.

What exactly do you mean by 'what ram is takes'? That's a little ambiguous.


Geoff


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