Two Processors, any benefit?

[srhutch]

The unit is used as a recording and stremaing device.

The Dell Precision 450 is what I am looking at 2.4GHZ dual Xeon with 1GB ram for £100.

But if I can sort out why existing system is struggling I woudl rather do that.

Still looking for a tool that will record CPU activity with process info to aid this diagnosis.

[gEd]

Did you try process explorer to see if it gave you the info you want? It is one of the best windows debugging tools around (which is why MS bought the company)

So are you saying that the exisitng PC that stutters is only used for recording and streaming and not playback via the graphics card?

So when do you see the cpu spike, when recording or when steaming?

what device are you streaming to?

Is the stutter always in the same part of the recording (indicating a problem at the recording stage) or doe sit vary (indicating a playback / streaming problem)

Is this Freesat HD content - I see you never got a solution to the stutter thread you posted last dec. Is so, does it stutter on non-HD content also?

[srhutch]

It would appear that a process causes the spike continuously once it starts, of course you dont notice this unless you keep checking the CPU or until you go to watch a recording.

Last time it happened I am sure the PVRX2 was the cause.

The only other comment I would make is that I cannot watch recordning on the PC because they alway stutter, now I dont know if this is the grpahics card, or the PC thats not of sufficient spec

The Graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420, but I assume this has no effect if you are only using for recording. I have no need to use for playback.

[gEd]

yes, your graphics card is definately not powerful enough for playback purposes. Do you have pvrx2.exe running while you are recording? perhaps try with it not running. you g/card may struggle with the directx requirements for pvrx2.exe.

The other questions that I asked you were designed to try and prove whether your problem is specifically related to recording or playback.

If you are sure that it is a problem during the recording phase (because the stutters always appear in the same place), I wonder whether it might be a problem with the RAID controller. Some RAID chips are low-rent and can rely too much on CPU power. If you had a spare disk lying around, you could try adding this and changing your recording drive to point to the new (non-raid) disk. Existing recordings will still appear ok if you leave the current recording drive alone but backup gbpvr.db3 as a precaution.

[srhutch]

The raid controller has only been added in the last week to improve things, the problem existed before.

PVRX2 seems fairly unstable on this box and often when you click on TV Listings for example nothing happens and you have to end task.

I dont like to have it running as obvioulsy it takes up resources.

So if my graphics card is causing problems running PVRX2 maybe thats what I should concentrate on.

should I splash out on a new card though or go for something like http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DELL-PRECISION-450...240%3A1318

thanks Steve

[wtg]

srhutch,

To monitor a specific processes CPU usage, try perfmon. It comes with Windows and works pretty well.

When you start it up it'll open with some default graphs, but right click on the legend and you can add new items. Choose process from the performance object, % Processor Time from the counter list and your process from the instances list.

Tim

[TonyXL]

If you're running just as a server, you don't need PVRX2 running, and you don't need a new graphics card.

FWIW, I too had the 10 second CPU spike. It was caused by the PVRX2 screensaver--the logo fades every 10 seconds. I switched to the screen saver plugin. So if you still need to run PVRX2, try disabling its screensaver and see if the CPU spikes stop.

[srhutch]

I will look as the screen saver then, but from meory I need a screensaver for the PCH, so will have to check that.

It would be nice to keep PVRX2 running as it saves time and spikes when starting but its not essential.

[gEd]

I don;t think there is any point in buying a new pc until you verify what is wrong with the one you have. If you did want to buy a new pc aat some point, I wouldn't go a for workstation with low capacity, hot, noisy scsi drives. they belong in a server room, not in the home.

The PC that you have should be capable of recording fine.

You don't need to concentrate on your graphics card until you want to playback the content on this PC. However in post #11, you said "The unit is used as a recording and stremaing device." so why do you wanto to upgrade your graphics card? this isn;t going to fix the stuttering problem.

You still haven;t explained how you are playing back your recordings, nor whether they are HD or standard def.

Can you answer the 5 questions that I asked in post #11. It will help us to understand where your might be.

[srhutch]

I have turned the screensave off, but if it is this causingthe problem it doesnt do it all the time as the graph trace was at 3% ish.

however whilt typing this PVRX2 hit 95% for a minute and a half just sitting at the menu, then dropped for a while and now back up at 90%+