Memory Size

[malcolm]

How much memory are you runnng on your PVR?

I'm not talking about general use machines that have GB-PVR running on them. I have built a dedicated box that is to run in the lounge. It presently is using 512MBytes of DDR (2700 speed) ram and has space for one more stick. A second stick will enable the dual channel mode on the nForce 2 chipset, which may or may not be a good thing!

When I bring the unit out of standbye, or access the unit after a recording, the hard drive thrashes away and it takes some time before I can get the desktop back, even when 'comskip' is not using all those cpu cycles. Would more memory help? If I transfer an mpeg file over the network, every 500meg or so of file the network transfer slows down to a crawl for a few seconds, then goes back to normal.

Oh I'm running XP SP2, an XP2400+ and a 160Gig Samsung drive, not the quietest when the heads are seeking I must say!

[reven]

for the past 5months ive been running my pvr with 256 mb DDR400 ram. i just, today, got an extra gb of ram, total = 1280mb. and well, its so much better! everythign is instant, use to take a few seconds for videos to start playing, the tv guide/onscreen display sometimes took awhile to popup. now everything is instant. i did turn off my system page file (since well 1280 mb of ram is more than enough for a pvr system to work without the need of a page file, so far the ram hasnt been over 45% used up).
ram isnt that expensive these days and it can improve things a heck of a lot. my recommendation, buy lots of ram.

[Darx-starz]

Hi 512 mb should be fine. You need to find out what is thrashing your machine. When gb-pvr is at idle how much is free? Should be about 256mb or thereabouts. With the default blue skin and all the fancy stuff disabled.

Do you have a static swap file? With all the thrashing, it sounds like your system is IO bound and memory will not help you.

[Torque]

I'm only using 256MB stick in my nForce board with an XP 2100+. ... and onboard video is using 32MB of that! I'm still at rev .09.08 ... .09.10 caused hangs, crashes, and lots of disk thrashing. I ordered another 512MB stick so I can upgrade to that new version that just came out.

[malcolm]

Thanks for the replies.

I am running the current version, .09.10, it is a clean install on my first attempt at this type of system, so I'm new to GB-PVR.

Darx-starz,
Do you have a static swap file?    No but I'll give it a try,

With all the thrashing, it sounds like your system is IO bound :     what do you mean by that?

[Darx-starz]

Quote[/b] ]
Darx-starz,
Do you have a static swap file? No but I'll give it a try,

With all the thrashing, it sounds like your system is IO bound : what do you mean by that?

Yes I have static swap file. Seek out Tipstr's posts he said what the swap file should be per amount of ram you have.
IO is things like disk, Network etc. It means Input / Output. Disks are usualy the slowest devices in a PC. Being I/O bound means that it is spending all its time accessing the Disk.

You say its a clean install. Does that mean Windows or gbpvr? If Windows has been on there a while I would rebuild it and remove all uneeded applications. I dont install AV and stop all unneeded services. Install all your bits and peices and you should be OK. Cwills turned me on to a product called "PerfectDisk". I use that now and my daily defrags are magic. If you go the dos route defrag everyday using windows defrag.

[malcolm]

Darx-starz: I know what I/O is, just didn't understand what you meant by I/O bound.

I installed Windows XP Pro (SP2) fresh onto the disc just for this PVR project. It is a full install of XP, but no extras like Office or such like. The only extra software has been that which I needed for the media centre project, so Nero, Media Player 10, a DVD player, ACE codec pack for Divx and Xvid files, the Hauppage software plus GB PVR and a few skins. Except for Comskip I have no extra plug-ins yet.

I'm starting off a defrag on the C: partition and then will allocate a fixed swap file and see if that helps. Thanks again for the advice.

[malcolm]

So I defragged the hard drive partitions, moved the swap file from C: to D: ( I actually still have a small one on the C: drive as recommended in the MS KB,) and this seems to have made quite a difference, system is now more responsive.

I take it to make the swap file 'static' I just set min and max sizes to be the same?

Now to clean out some of the unneccesary services running in the background!

Yes I find that with just GB-PVR running there is still 256 MByte memory free, so available memory seems fine.

[gwyden]

you may want to look at hibernation. Just turn it off. Also make sure your HDD's don't turn off after a time-out period. This will cause your wake times to be slower.