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#1 2007-06-19 04:02:25

jeremyrainman
Member
Registered: 2007-06-15
Posts: 34

MythTV with Nvidia GeForce on a 64-bit cpu question... (resolved)

I have an Intel Duo_core 2.4 with a GeForce 8600 that I am planning on using as a mythTV box.

Obviously, speed is important in a machine that is supposed to let you watch TV and record it at the same time, so the answer to the question has definite use.

I could go with the x86 kernel, and use the proprietary NVIDIA drivers. This may (possibly) have the added advantage of offloading some video decoding to the nice GeForce card. However, I would be sacrificing some general CPU speed by not going with a 64-bit OS.

OR

I could go with the x86_64 kernel, and use the default NVIDIA drivers that would probably make the use of openGL impossible (no big deal) but also other potential features of the card that would make playback better. However, I would probably gain significant speed with all the other mythTV backend operations.

Should I just do the fun thing and try both configurations, or is there one particular road that is most likely to guarantee the best possible performance?

Last edited by jeremyrainman (2007-06-20 02:32:18)

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#2 2007-06-19 22:47:47

retsaw
Member
From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-03-22
Posts: 132

Re: MythTV with Nvidia GeForce on a 64-bit cpu question... (resolved)

nVidia has 64-bit drivers, so you should be able to use the proprietary drivers whatever.   I would suggest starting off with 64-bit, the only reason to run 32-bit as far as I can see is if there are any bugs specific to the 64-bit version, so you may want to install 32-bit aswell in case you run into bugs and want to check if they are 64-bit specific.

Depending on your specific use of mythTV, I would say your hardware is possibly overkill, particularly the graphics card.  My desktop/mythTVfrontend+backend works fine with the integrated Via Unichrome graphics and an Athlon XP 2800+ CPU.  However my tuners receive DVB broadcasts which are already MPEG2 encoded so I don't have to worry about the CPU overhead of encoding.  It'd be nice to have better hardware, but I don't need it for my usage.

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#3 2007-06-19 23:11:31

jeremyrainman
Member
Registered: 2007-06-15
Posts: 34

Re: MythTV with Nvidia GeForce on a 64-bit cpu question... (resolved)

Yes, Nvidia does have 64 bit drivers. But when I try to install them, the script errors out saying my kernel is mismatched. It somehow doesn't like the arch64 kernel, I'm not kernel-saavy enough to know why that is, but it claims that "these drivers are for the Ia64 kernel, and you appear to have the x86_64."

As far as hardware overkill, well, yeah, it probably is. The situation I have is somewhat unique though, I have free standard-definition DirecTV. So, I was planning on having more than 2 capture cards. I was going to use 2 for off-air HD, and possibly one (or two) for standard recording off the directv feed. I realize this is going to be both technical in application and an awkward solution at best.

Are you saying my hardware is overkill enough to not worry about which route I go?

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#4 2007-06-20 02:31:57

jeremyrainman
Member
Registered: 2007-06-15
Posts: 34

Re: MythTV with Nvidia GeForce on a 64-bit cpu question... (resolved)

ok, Imadork... they do have x86_64 drivers...

but... they're listed on nvidia's site under AMD... and I have no amd cpu.. so I think I can be forgiven for not trying them.

working under proprietary driver now, which of course makes the whole question moot.

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#5 2007-06-20 20:14:41

retsaw
Member
From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-03-22
Posts: 132

Re: MythTV with Nvidia GeForce on a 64-bit cpu question... (resolved)

jeremyrainman wrote:

Are you saying my hardware is overkill enough to not worry about which route I go?

I wasn't really saying that, but I shouldn't think you'd have problems with lack of horsepower whichever route you take.

ok, Imadork... they do have x86_64 drivers...

but... they're listed on nvidia's site under AMD... and I have no amd cpu.. so I think I can be forgiven for not trying them.

You should have just used the driver selector, which would have taken you to the right driver page. wink

I can't really blame you for getting confused over the names of the CPU architectures though, since it would be logical for x86_64 to be referred to as IA64 when x86 is referred to as IA32.  IA64 is used for Itanium since Intel developed that before there were x86_64 chips and I guess they envisioned the Itanium as the future of 64-bit computing at the time.  For your reference EM64T is what Intel use to refer to their x86_64 instruction set, which is equivalent to AMD64.

Last edited by retsaw (2007-06-20 20:15:04)

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