Mini Computer Performance Issues and Best OS to use...

[schneideris]

Thanks Graham,

I sent a note and will try this out. Much appreciate your pointing in this direction.

[ga_mueller]

I never saw what GPU your 330 has. If it's an ION, then you should be able to play HD, and the problem is no hardware accel. If it's just the crappy GPU that's on the 330 then it will never work well. My client uses a 230 (single core Atom) with ION GPU and it works, barely. It can play HD all day long, but the menu navigation is very sluggish.

[schneideris]

It is the IOM.

This is definitely an odd one in that the unit does well in the AM but falters in the PM. With some of the earlier changes (I still want to try the recomendation from Graham) things are a little better (it didn't start loosing sync and sound quality until a little later in the PM last night).

[ga_mueller]

When it stutters, bring up task manager to see if other processes are hogging your CPU, if so kill them and see if the stuttering ends. When playing HD my single core Atom/ION is at about 30% CPU usage, and does not stutter.

[schneideris]

Already did that and all the numbers were fine. CPU was also around 30%, memory was around 60% and network was light.

[ga_mueller]

You can also allocate more memory to the ION GPU, which I did. As I recall, I set it to 512K where normally it was 128K. You can change it in bios; might be worth a try. Also, your dual core CPU usage should be less than my single core, so that's also a bit weird.

[jcjefferies]

If this is video memory you are talking about then using 512Mb is a bit of a waste unless you have many GB of memory installed. You only need 64MB to display 1920x1080 video but NextPVR uses a bit of video memory for on screen display hence the recommended 128MB video memory.

Chris

[stustunz]

How hot is it getting ?
Is it a wireless connection or wired ?
Who else is using the network at night ?
Do you have comskip running on server?
whats the server doing at the time its jumpy?

[HarryH3]

A couple of things that come to mind:

Comskip can be brutal on Disk I/O, even when not using a ton of CPU. There's a "Play Nice" setting that will ramp the I/O way down, but it also greatly increases the time it takes to complete analysis of a show.

By any chance is an antivirus program running an automated background scan every afternoon/evening? This is another thing that will typically not show much CPU usage but is hammering the Disk I/O.

[schneideris]

You can also allocate more memory to the ION GPU, which I did. As I recall, I set it to 512K where normally it was 128K. You can change it in bios; might be worth a try. Also, your dual core CPU usage should be less than my single core, so that's also a bit weird.

BIOS didn't have anyplace to make any changes to the ION. I did a driver update check on the ION in control panel which did identify an available update. Will see if that has any value.