[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
Dave wrote: > > I am looking to spec a machine for a LINUX MCE Core. Because it is a > Core I am trying to make it as powerful as I can afford but this had led > to a couple of questions regarding LINUX which I must profess to be > ignorant in and was wondering whether anyone could provide the answers > to. Please bear in mind I will be using Kubuntu 7.10 because that is the > latest version LINUX MCE will run on. > > Firstly I am looking to put in 4 Gig Memory (the max for the MB) but am > unsure as to whether a 32 Bit LINUX can address such a large amount > directly and if not what happens to the rest of it; does it sit idle > (and wasted) or will it become a RAMDisk or similar? The answer is not a simple one, Linux is very flexible with how you can configure memory usage, and for some purposes a 32bit kernel can use 4GB of RAM effectively but..... ... If I was installing 4GB of RAM in a box I would opt for a 64 bit Linux based distro - which is pretty much all of the major distros just pick the right option. If Linux MCE can't run in 64 bit, then check with them what will work. Probably the issue will be drivers for unusual hardware if there are any. > Secondly I was going to get a Quad-Core Processor but again I wasn't > sure whether LINUX would make use of all the Processors (ditto > Dual-Core) or would be better saving money and using a single-core > Processor instead? (or at least the cheapest Dual-Core). Yes it will be able to utilise dual and quad core processors. Given all my servers (bar one) are sitting around at load 0, I'm not sure you'll need all that power. If the bulk of CPU is used by one single threaded process then it can't use the other CPUs, but that is an application issue not a server issue. Mostly video editing and video application will eat CPU and other resources - but unless you have hardware designed to handle it efficiently that is pretty much a given. Not clear to me that the Linux MCE does that sort of thing. Either way the folks who do Linux MCE are the ones to ask. You may also want to ensure that the machine is well specced in terms of Front Side Bus and other I/O. You'll want a video card that is well supported. A lot of the off the shelf DVD and TV devices these days are just low specced PCs. I seem to remember the MythTV folks had a German set top box which they turned into a Myth TV playback box, it was a 200MHz Pentium PC inside with no trimmings, but the box did MPEG decoding in hardware. I think the TiVo does something similar. Myth TV website notes that some graphics cards don't support XVideo on their TV output.... I suspect choice of the right graphics cards is as important as other choices, possibly more so. Indeed this is apparent on my desktop just running a normal PC desktop, I have a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 box with 833Mhz front side bus, hardware RAID cache, and I also have a fanless VIA mini-itx based box (which does nothing like as much in bogomips) with no fancy I/O, but the VIA graphics card is properly supported where as the other box just has a cheap onboard graphics card. The VIA box is noticeably quicker at certain common tasks (mostly those that involve rendering window chrome, or any fancy accelerated graphics). Details matter. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html