Not enough pizzazz - Celeron D 331 2.66, 1GB ram

[ApexHack]

I found out tonight my computer is just shy of enough oomph to be recording and comskipping three simultaneous OTA ATSC shows and also stream to the PCH. Videoredo may have also been running.

I tried to play something and it was hanging bad w/o audio. I knew something was up because this is the first problem playing anything with the PCH. The computer took a while to come off the screensaver and every command was taking way too long. The box was bogged down bigtime.

I put the Celeron in this computer initially because it was cheap and the system was only going to be used for email and web surfing by the better half. I was trying to get up on the curve a little with the socket 775 platform seeing HDTV down the pike. It's here now.

Turns out my old P4 3.0E was just as fast if not a little more than the Celeron. About (I can't find the exact cpus) 30 points according to Passmark cpu charts.

I've got a E2200 and another gig of ram on the way so we'll see if that will do it. The E2200 is more than 800 points better in Passmark. I'll post back the results.

Oh, and if you were wondering, my board is a cheapo that doesn't let me do any overclocking. I wouldn't really know what to do if it did, but this would probably prompt me to learn.

Thanks for reading. Cheers

Oh, the last recording ended an hour ago and there are still three instances of comskip running - ouch. Even though the cpu is maxed at least you can navigate the computer now.

[pBS]

it's the hard drive...6 simultaneous hd streams peaks the throughput beyond what your hard drive can handle i'll bet, after which windows will quickly get behind and run out of caching memory and crash...
the E2200 won't hurt for sure, but i bet it won' get rid of the problem completely...
i made a little helper app to make comskip sequential [only 1 at a time] so it wouldn't bog me down during multiple recordings..
but you can also add -n switch to comskip to have it ease off the cpu a bit...

raid is not the answer either cuz it's only marginal and writes are typically slower actually..

other things you can do to ease load is use ntfs junctions if your rec drive is ntfs..
[links a dir to another drive,so can move whole series to other drives]

check your cpu usage at those peak times, recording takes almost nothing, it's comskip that is eating up the cycles...but even that only takes what's left over, it lets everything else have priority and only takes 'extra' cpu cycles...
so even tho comskip peggs cpu, it's only cuz nothing else is using it...

[HarryH3]

You can configure comskip to "play nice" at certain times of the day, so that it doesn't take over your CPU. I've added the following as the first lines in my comskip.ini and it makes a dramatic difference in how responsive the PC is while comskip is running:

play_nice_start=0600 ;play_nice prevents comskip from hogging too many resources. Use military time to set the time period of the day for comskip to use this setting.
play_nice_end=2359

It sets the priority for comskip to low. Comskip will still use scads of CPU when nothing else is requesting it, but it relinquishes the CPU to any other process that has higher priority. Since upgrading from 1 to 3 tuners, watching anything via the MVP was nearly impossible when multiple recordings would finish and comskip would start running. Using the play nice feature returned operation to normal.

[ApexHack]

Excellent, thanks so much guys.

I'm bad about jumping to conclusions I guess. I thought about the hard drive but then I thought it couldn't be since the other computer would record 3 SD shows at a time no problem.

6 streams? I only had 3 recordings going. I guess I need to do some reading.

I'll look into those comskip tweaks in the meantime. Plus I'm sure another gig of ram couldn't hurt. I'll put that in today and hopefully the processor by Thursday.

Cheers

[ApexHack]

Well, turns out I've got bigger problems. Yay, my new seagate 1.5T is running in PIO mode. Their checker site said SD37 would be OK, they lied looks like.

Not to mention it looks like the memory is running at half speed for some reason. 533Mhz FSB, 533Mhz memory should be running at 533 as far as I should know.

The futzing is fun to some degree, but I'm looking forward to the forget about it stage I had the old system at.

[mvallevand]

I can't imagine that working very well on a mid-priced system, offloading comskip is going to pay more dividend in performance than buying an i7

To improve PCH performance, using the Blue skin is fastest, turning off GBPVR logging reduces disk i/o and if you have tweaked config.xml to give the MVP high priority reduce it to false.

Martin

[wtg]

Well, turns out I've got bigger problems. Yay, my new seagate 1.5T is running in PIO mode. Their checker site said SD37 would be OK, they lied looks like.

In case you're not aware, Windows turns down the IO mode on a disk when it encounters errors with it. If the errors continue, eventually it results in it being in the lowest mode, PIO. PIO mode will definitely kill your system performance.

Have you done the firmware upgrade for the Seagate drive? Supposedly you aren't the only one having trouble with the 1.5 TB drives resetting back to PIO mode and the firmware update is supposed to help that.

[ApexHack]

I can't imagine that working very well on a mid-priced system, offloading comskip is going to pay more dividend in performance than buying an i7

To improve PCH performance, using the Blue skin is fastest, turning off GBPVR logging reduces disk i/o and if you have tweaked config.xml to give the MVP high priority reduce it to false.

Martin

Hi Martin, what do you mean by "offloading comskip"? I wish I could afford an i7 rig.

In case you're not aware, Windows turns down the IO mode on a disk when it encounters errors with it. If the errors continue, eventually it results in it being in the lowest mode, PIO. PIO mode will definitely kill your system performance.

Have you done the firmware upgrade for the Seagate drive? Supposedly you aren't the only one having trouble with the 1.5 TB drives resetting back to PIO mode and the firmware update is supposed to help that.

I'm working on it now. I'm having trouble finding the firmware on seagate's site, but I'll get there.

I pulled the drive out of the enclosure. I hope that isn't causing any trouble. I noticed it was already formatted with some seagate stuff on it when I first fired it up.

Cheers

[ApexHack]

Boo Seagate. The firmware won't load because my s/n is out of range. It's looking for 9JU....-300 and I have 9VS09T16. What....ever. My eyes are tired from reading their forums.

I guess I'm stuck with the turd unless someone knows something I don't or maybe seagate will eventually release a firmware that will work. No waranty for me since I pulled apart the enclosure. I gambled and lost in this instance.

[pBS]

by 6 streams i meant recording 3 and comskipping 3 at same time...= 6
plus watching one is also reading from same disk...[= 7]

i prefer to have as many disks as i can fit comfortably and spread them out, splitting chores between 2 disks alone cuts throughput needed in half...

just using the -n comskip setting will get you over the hump i believe till they release a working firmware...