gbpvr hardware options?

[nv40]

I have been running gbpvr on a dedicated box consisting of an amd athlon-xp 1600, with 512 ram....and a 200 gig 7200 rpm hard drive just for storage. I just picked up a spare machine from a friend that has a faster proc(2.8 pentium) but less ram (128 MB- but i might have another stick of 128 for it). I'm looking for some feedback as to whether gbpvr seems to benefit more from proc, or ram....since i've been thinking of moving it over to this intel machine. On that same note, anyone done a move to another computer and been able to basically clone gbpvr, or will i have to do a fresh install and lose the link to all my recordings and settings?

p.s.- all the other hardware will be moved over....since the intel machine is just cpu-ram-and motherboard, but windows will have to be re-installed obviously, hence my dilemma.

[reboot]

GBPVR benefits from CPU power if there's any pre or post processing to be done, otherwise it probably benefits most from enormous amounts of hard drive space from all the recordings you keep.
If the box can run XP and gpbvr (with a hardware mpeg-2 encoder/tuner card), then there's nothing else that needs to be added.

[SniperDude]

I would hope you can get more RAM but that depends on how much data GBPVR has to load up.. as I understand it, the Skin Resolution, The number of Channels /Scheduled Recordings, EPG data all have a direct effect on the amount of RAM you would want... I have seen my system consume 450Mb or RAM running 200+channels 4 days EPG, and normal Blue skin, with 1 MVP and 1local GBPVR system running...

but yah drivespace is a good thing as well!

[csy]

My system consumes 350-400MB RAM when running GBPVR, but if I'm transcoding then it uses the full 1GB RAM.

I found that I needed AMD 2000+ CPU to be able to use VMR9 smoothly.

[gEd]

The Pentium will definately be quicker for transcoding videos and should make gbpvr more responsive than the amd 1600 but you ideally need 512MB RAM minimum to run gbpvr. Any less than this and the benefits of the cpu upgrade may be lost due to swapping.

The Pentium may also generate a lot more heat.

Once you have built your new machine, you can import all of your recordings from the recordings-dump.xml file in the gbpvr folder. Either make sure the recordings are in the same path as they were before or (if you want to copy them somewhere else) edit this xml file and do a find/replace of the recordings path before importing into gbpvr.

[nv40]

thanks guys....i think i;m gonna make the switch, i'll try and secure some more ram. Only thing left to worry about is that one of you mentioned more heat out of the pentium....and i normally have this thing shoved away in a closet in a case with few fans, but we'll see.

[pBS]

if it's a socket 478 p4 then it'll be waay cooler than the LGA775 socket...the 775's consume much more juice and give off way more heat for identical speed...i was suprised...the hyperthreading is nice to have tho and that p4 2.8 was the lowest to have it so if it is a 800mhz bus version, get matching sticks of 400mhz DUAL-Channle ram and you'll get Hyperthreading working and that'll give you nice multitasking...[almost like dual-core]
[and get 512+mem, memory seems to be most noticeable upgrade up to a gig]
and you'll NEVER have enough hard drive space! lol

[nv40]

if it's a socket 478 p4 then it'll be waay cooler than the LGA775 socket...the 775's consume much more juice and give off way more heat for identical speed...i was suprised...the hyperthreading is nice to have tho and that p4 2.8 was the lowest to have it so if it is a 800mhz bus version, get matching sticks of 400mhz DUAL-Channle ram and you'll get Hyperthreading working and that'll give you nice multitasking...[almost like dual-core]
[and get 512+mem, memory seems to be most noticeable upgrade up to a gig]
and you'll NEVER have enough hard drive space! lol

I didn't think it would have hyperthreading. I've always been an amd guy, so i'm not familiar with the pentium's as much as i should be. Also, I thought this thing took ddr2 ram.....cause if it doesn't, i can use the ram out of my amd box then, right? I think it's 333, or it might be 266....but it should still work huh? How many different pentium's came in the 2.8 range? could it be a 533 FSB?