Minimum Specs on a GBPVR Server

[jpete1019]

I was looking around and alot of people are advising that I have 1 GHz processor to run GBPVR. What if I'm just running a media server, that would only do recording (no viewing), and all the recording is in standard def. Could I make it work with a old P3 500 MHz processor, 256 MB RAM, and running either Windows XP or even Windows 2000? Would I be taxing the machine too hard or would it work fine? I think the hardware encoders for the Hauppauge cards could handle most of the work, but what about everything else?

I do have a spare single core 1.9 GHz processor laying around also and 1 GB of DDR2 Memory that I wanted to put in my current PC to give it 3 GB, but maybe I get a new mobo and put it in that....

[philly_phenom]

1.9 sounds a bit slow - you might be able to do it, but don't expect to be able to do anything else on it while people are watching TV. Also I wouldn't even try to get comskip going.

[gEd]

and p3 500 is possibly too slow but it might work. However you really need 512MB minimum in my opinion to run gbpvr, even just as a recording server.

A 1.9Ghz would be fine. My AMD XP chip runs at 2Ghz and can record 2 shows whilst watching a third.

[erik]

I have run GBPVR as a recording only server including using comskip for the detection of the commercials with two SD tuners on a VIA C3 700MHz, which is about the speed of a 500MHz Celeron. The server was also used for as file, web and mail server.
256MByte memory works when running on W2k, not on XP.
I used the remote web admin plugin for scheduling recordings, but the web admin did run slow.

[jpete1019]

Yeah, I had that old 1.9Ghz proc running GBPVR before I upgraded my main PC to a dual core

I think I may give the 500MHz proc a try and experiment. I'll be a test dummy and see exactly how many resources GBPVR will take up. I will most likely have to run it on Windows 2000, but I know I could run XP on the 500Mhz proc. All i need is a replacement psu for the one that went poof the other day...

[wtg]

If memory serves the min. requirements for the PVR-250 used to be listed as a PII-450, or maybe that was the min. requirements for MythTV when it originally came out. Whatever the case, with a hardware encoder it doesn't take much of a PC to record.

[K.S.]

the P3 500MHz with 256MB will do it with w2k as server only

[prouton]

However, if you want to run an MVP (and probably it's successors), you're not going to be able to skimp so much. I had to run my server off of an Athlon 850 for a brief period of time, and it just couldn't do it smoothly. A Pentium 4 1.6GHz, or an Athlon XP 1700+ do okay, but I wouldn't want to have to go with less. And even at that level, powering up an MVP while a recording is being done causes the recording to miss a few seconds.

[wtg]

Hmmm, I ran 3 MVPs off a Celeron 1.1 GHz for quite a while and it could serve all of them and record without much trouble. I did have cpu offloading enabled on my network card though (or whatever that feature's called - can't recall exactly). The only problem I had was with the current time and Next Recording widget.

The Next Recording widget updates every 5 seconds and the time every minute, and when all 3 kicked in at the same time it put the hurt on the server. Just briefly, but you could feel the spike. I simply made a copy of the skin that was MVP only and disabled both, and then things went fine.