CPU to Handle 4 Extenders & 4 Tuners

[tsf]

Hi All

I am having a dilemma as to what CPU to purchase for my HTPC upgrade. I have 4 XBOX360 Extenders Connected and 4 Tuners installed in the PC.

I was thinking between the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz and the Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E8500 3.15Ghz processors.

My current CPU Pentium D 3.2Ghz is often sitting at 80-90% CPU usage and I am hoping to get that down a little.

Also, is there any benefit in installing the 64bit version of Vista Ultimate.

Cheers
Andrew

[slimf]

With that much going on I would settle for no less than a fast quad core (somthing faster than the old Q6600 and faster than the Q9450 which is 45nm) and I would be dumping 8gb ram into the PC and Vista 64bit. Rams cheap :-P

You may also need to think about Raid - as all four tuners recording/playing back HD may tax your drive just a tad.

[dgaust]

AFAIK, the CPU is not the one actually decoding the stream from the tuner (in an extender session), so you shouldn't really need anything to powerful. Although something greater than a Pentium D is probably need.

There might be a little overhead with the connection, but I don't think a quad core is necessary.

Maybe an extender user can clarify.

A lot of people use 4 tuners with lesser CPU's than the quad cores and they run just fine.

[tsf]

Now I am confussed as to what CPU is needed.

Do I purchase a E8500 or the Q6600 or Q9550 CPU. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, was hoping to rebuild this weekend.

Cheers
Andrew

[blackjet]

Originally Posted by tsf

Now I am confussed as to what CPU is needed.

Do I purchase a E8500 or the Q6600 or Q9550 CPU. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, was hoping to rebuild this weekend.

Cheers
Andrew

Hello Andrew.
I do not want to confuse you, just want to give you my realworld situation.
I run 4 dvbt tuners on my system, I use a intel core 2 duo E6750 2.66ghz.

My system has ran perfectly for over 12 months, until recently started having issues after installing Vista SP1

.Regards Blackjet

[arkay]

There really should be no need for a lot of CPU. Extenders are only having media shared to them.

When I was running Vista I had 4 tuners happily with an E6600 dual core.

The only time you should need a heftier CPU would be if you're using a transcoder to get the media to the extender.

On my current system with Mythtv I have 4 tuners to 5 PC's (extenders) on a P4 1.7Ghz without issues so CPU/memory shouldn't be your concern. DVB-T is straight mpeg to disk, no processing required and sharing that to an extender is file transfer only. Network bandwidth would be more important. Unless MS's extender protocol is grossly poorly performing you shouldn't need a whole lot. You should also be able to look up the performance metrics of a Pentium D vs a current Dual core to see how much you'll gain by changing.

I also have to add. A Pentium D at 80-90% is not a Pentium D at 100%. If you're not having issues in actual playback on any of the extenders then stop looking at the CPU %ages.... Don't waste money on upgrades if what you have works... Unless you have an issue with heat for instance in which case I'd go for a near top of the line dual core. Should be more than enough and cooler than a quad.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[becje01]

tsf

This may or may not be helpful - But I have run a P4 3 Ghz (i.e. single core) PC running Vista with 2 tuners, doing simultaneous recording of 2 HD channels while the extender watches one of those recordings (timeslipped). THE PC was busy (but I didn't buy it to be idle!) So I suspect that quad core / 8GB of RAM would be more than sufficient.

From my understanding, the extenders are doing terminal sessions into the Vista PC - the vista PC is NOT rendering the content, the extender does that (unless you're transcoding, in which case all bets are off) - so network bandwidth and storage I/O performance is probably more of a concern than raw CPU grunt. Perhaps consider a striped RAID array for the drive storing Recorded TV?

I would think that if 2GB RAM is the realistic minimum for Vista, and you're running 4 simultaneous sessions (hope you've got enough tuners?), then 4GB RAM would probably be pragmatic. Now you start to get close to a 32bit or 64bit question - can't help you there, sorry, but I'm sure others can offer a balanced perspective of driver maturity etc.

As perspective, we use that dodgy ($300 from eBay) P4 to watch 720p MKV rips, AVIs & xvids & H.264, as well as DVB-T HD television (it copes fine with HD sport, mmm Stephanie Rice...sorry, got sidetracked ). I've got a dual usb tuner in the moment and am under pressure to add more and this system copes fine with being used as the primary VMC, and serves the Xbox when needed...

You don't say whether you will use the HTPC as HTPC, or just as a "server" with the Extenders being used to consume content - but if it's a "server" then you can go easier with the hardware, if it's also being used as a HTPC then I would go for a bit more grunt.

My 2c

[broadstar44]

i run a 6850 to 3 x Xbox360's and cpu is not really a issue at all.
the biggest issue i have is harddrive. run raid on 2 drives.
My harddrive reads 5.8 in vista on a single drive and still is not anough.

[tsf]

Originally Posted by broadstar44

i run a 6850 to 3 x Xbox360's and cpu is not really a issue at all.
the biggest issue i have is harddrive. run raid on 2 drives.
My harddrive reads 5.8 in vista on a single drive and still is not anough.

Thanks.

My Harddrive (2x Samsung 1Tb, one for OS / Music and avi's and one for Recorded TV) also read 5.8 want can be done to improve this, any ideas.

Cheers
Andrew

[CordlezToaster]

Solid state drives(ssd) will improve drive reading/writing times but be prepared for cost!.