[Noelix]

I'm trying to learn about what hardware affects what before I go out and purchase upgrades for my htpc. I've noticed that some people's systems use probably 512MB or less of ram and are able to have as many as three tv tuners in their system (I assume so they can record three shows at once). My question is - does it matter what speed (quality) of ram you get, and what's the difference? In the end, does the speed of memory that you get affect how many shows you can record/play at once?

I'm always learning!

[Taipan]

Originally Posted by Noelix

does the speed of memory that you get affect how many shows you can record/play at once?

If you are recording DVB TV or from a hardware encoding analog TV card, then I would doubt that the speed of RAM would have any noticeable impact. Since you are really just streaming MPEG2 data from the TV card to the HDD, then I would guess that the HDD transfer rate/buffer size would be the limiting factor?

I have never tested the limits of this, but I have recorded 2 HD DVB TV programs and watched a third recorded program, all at the same time, on my modest system without any hiccups....

[gxtracker]

The speed of the memory in your system does not affect the number of shows you can record at a time. Since you're in North America you will be looking at a Hardware Encoding Analog card - which means that the TV card will encode and compress the TV signal and push it right through the PCI bus to the Hard drive.

Now with that said, Memory speed can have a great effect on system performance. Its hard to qualify into an exact number because of the way the CPU, Northbridge, RAM and other subsystems communicate with eachother.

In most cases, having more RAM is better than having faster RAM - only because if your system runs out of RAM, it has to resort to using SWAP space on the hard drive which is much slower than even the slowest RAM you could ever put in your system.

Most of us get away with only having 512mb of RAM in our systems because:

A) they are dedicated HTPC systems that only take care of media related task
b) we have removed unused processes and services from windows which frees up a huge amount of RAM.

For example, on a fresh boot my XP HTPC uses less than 80mb of RAM once fully loaded. Many of the services that would take up that extra space have been disabled like help and support, themes, security center, etc...

with a dedicated HTPC, you have to give into a mindset that this device is more of an embedded computing system with a dedicated task - not a general purpose computer used for work, games, internet, etc... once you put yourself in that mindset and configure the system in that respect, then you'll be suprised what you can achieve with relatively modest hardware.

[Noelix]

Thanks for the info so far guys. So as you can see from "My System" specs, I only have 256MB of ram, and I have an Athlon XP 2200+, which is a bit slower than the ones you guys have. I've attached some screenshots of task manager and have labeled actions accordingly on them. Currently, the system can only handle one "process" at a time (a "process" consisting of either watching tv or recording tv, not both). I'd like to be able to upgrade my system so it can handle three things at once - recording two shows in the background while I watch a third (previously recorded video, dvd, etc.).

From the screenshots you can see, do you think it's a simple fix of adding say a gig of ram to the system, or is it not worth it and should I just upgrade the whole processor, motherboard, and memory altogether?

[Spragleknas]

Traditionaly, Intel-systems benefit most on RAM-speeds, while AMD-systems was more dependant on memory timings/latency (ie. cas latency/CL). However, on newer AMD-systems, things are not that obvious.

One certan thing, however, is that an integrated graphic-card (like nVidia 6150) would benefit form good memory (speed and probably timings, as well as running dual).

The bottom line is that memory speed/timings effects on systems are hardly worth the price you pay for "state of the art modules"- except for extreme OC'ers.

Memory is often hyped up; remember the "dual-wave" on socket A-systems? Performance increasment was around 3-5%.

[Paranoid Delusion]

I only have 256MB of ram

512mb perfect for what you need, even doing video encoding, putting 1 gig of ram in mine made no noticeable difference.

But the increase to 512mb does.

regards

[Taipan]

I notice that your CPU% is very high (85%) when watching TV - that seems odd. Do you have hardware acceleration (DxVA) enabled - and what video decoder are you using? My CPU% is less than 20% when watching full-screen TV.

Increasing the RAM to 512 will make the biggest improvement - IMHO .....

[Noelix]

Originally Posted by Taipan

I notice that your CPU% is very high (85%) when watching TV - that seems odd. Do you have hardware acceleration (DxVA) enabled - and what video decoder are you using? My CPU% is less than 20% when watching full-screen TV.

I was using MPA/MPV codecs. I searched in the forums for "DxVA" and came across this post, installed Nvidia PureVideo and the cpu usage went down to less than 30% when watching tv. Thanks! I know now what my next step is - more ram! Thanks guys for clearing this up for me.