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Cheers, Simon. Good point about the Processors perhaps I will look that up on the FAQ for MCE and possibly post a question. Front side BUS and Other I/O - I must admit to be very ignorant around this area (although I did read a good analogy the other day about the Front-Side bus being a highway between two cities, Memory and CPU). I guess I was rather hoping I would pick a Chip and the Bus would sort itself out. As regards Graphics; yes MCE is very fussy with Graphics - I was planning on using the Fit-PC or Linutop low-powered boxes for the Media Directors but a MD will require a NVidia Graphics card for the UI (grrr means I have to build something). As ever lots to consider!! Regards, Dave. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Simon Waters" <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 9:58 PM Subject: Re: [LUG] A couple of questions > 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.175 / Virus Database: 270.9.0/1770 - Release Date: 11/5/2008 5:36 PM -- 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