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PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:42 am 
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I think all of you would find this very interesting. I know I did, and I will be trying this out soon.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/mediasmart-ex475-hack,review-31530.html

Mod: Can this be reviewed and then placed as a sticky ?

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:22 am 
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That's a great guide. It pretty much covers all of the upgrades in one place.


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 9:15 am 
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Good article and resource.

What I found particularly interesting was the CPU benchmarking comparison between the stock AMD processor (3400+ in his case) and the common upgrades to the LE1640 or the BE2350. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/mediasmar ... 530-7.html He essentially concludes based upon his benmark tests that there is no real performance gained by upgrading the CPU.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 9:35 am 
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I was not particularly surprised with the conclusion but a little at the details! I did not expec there to be any inverse relationship shown for the processor speeds! With the LE-1640 I suspect it comes from the dual-speed nature of the processor but surprising nevertheless.

Why am I not surprised? All the tasks he compared are limited by either the network or the disk speed. He did not compare an AV scan, for example, an area where I notice a VERY marked performance increase with my LE-1640. Nor did he include any processor-intensive application such as handling a live video feed from a net-camera for a security system, another area where the "stock" processor has problems.

I can understand why he chose the tasks he did, especially why he did not do something like the video, but his closing comment on the situation is a little "soft" for my taste.

That said, for the average and intended user NOT running AV software (at least not when using the box productively), this is an excellent piece of work and a good conclusion.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 10:10 am 
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John,

You make some good point. What AV are you running that is eating up lots of CPU cycles? I'm running Avast WHS and don't see any impact from it.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:21 am 
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Ed did a nice job on his writeup, and pretty much all of it he gathered from this site. I thank you all for your contributions to make it possible, and Ed for aggregating and consolidating it so well. :mss:

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:30 am 
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Texas-Hansen wrote:
You make some good point. What AV are you running that is eating up lots of CPU cycles? I'm running Avast WHS and don't see any impact from it.

I use F-Secure.

The problem is with initial scans and is not unique to F-Secure. Any scans in the background after the initial one are not really a problem. Scheduled "full" scans probably would be for most.

I saw a hit to file sharing when I had the original processor. Aftyer upgrading I need to look at Task Manager to see it -- but it IS obvious there! If I simultaneously do a full AV scan, a defrag, and security video monitoring (especially with multiple active cameras) I see a file sharing performance hit OR a hit to the video qualit (or both). But that is asking a heck of a lot from this little box.

My point is that there are tasks other than what he documented that would show a difference in the processor speed. And he does gently mention it -- just TOO gently in my opinion. But it is a great piece of work!

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 1:34 am 
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Dear John:

Thanks very much for your suggestions on how to alter the test mix to show dual core CPUs off to better advantage. If I can figure out some way to script such activities for replicability, I'll be happy to run some additional tests to see what pops up. I've been thinking about using the unit to rip some discs, which would surely add to the background load, and I've got PerfectDisk 10 installed, so I can also do de-frag in the background as well. Great suggestions!

Can you PM me some info on your video surveillance stuff? I'm curious to know what kind of HW/SW you're using and how well it works for you. TIA for your help and support, and thanks for the thoughtful feedback on the story, too.

--Ed--


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 5:44 am 
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EdTittel wrote:
...Can you PM me some info on your video surveillance stuff? I'm curious to know what kind of HW/SW you're using and how well it works for you...

Better yet write a post about what you're using so we can all benefit. :)

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:55 am 
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First, Ed, welcome to Alex's corner of the web! Good to have you aboard! And that was an excellent piece of woirk.

I'll post rather than PM so all can benefit.

EdTittel wrote:
Can you PM me some info on your video surveillance stuff? I'm curious to know what kind of HW/SW you're using and how well it works for you.

For the video surveillance I think you could just use PV Software's Active WebCam program as a good non-proprietary and no-cost benchmark. Just use an existing webcam and that should do it. (If you REALLY want to stress it add a couple more webcams.) Install it using RDC. (I have the Advanced Admin Console Add-In set up to access it without needing RDC, but that would not impact your benchmark.) For "scripting" you can just start the program and let it monitor something (or set up auto-start). The workload does not vary much with the video content, but it will spike some if you have motion detection starting and stopping the recording. For the purposes of your testing I would not bother with motion or recording as you are really not testing the software, rather the MSS. For more load just add a camera.

I do use this software to record video streams in conjunction with my home security system. (I do not discuss the details of the latter.)

As for defrag: that one is more of a problem to benchmark as, ideally, one would want the same degree of defragmentation as the starting point for the comparisons. But, since comparative defrag performance is not the issue, just having it run on a machine that has been previously defragged is the easy-out. (Defrag it before the first test.) Will it be exact? No, but it willl be "good enough" for the purposes you are testing for.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:00 pm 
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WHS is really much more capable than just Storage and streaming when you throw add-ins into the mix.

Some WHS add-ins are cpu intensive. I use Sage TV which adds some CPU load. In addition I have installed comskip which process the recorded mpg files and creates a data file marking the location of comercials which Sagetv media center can use to skip comercials. Comskip is very cpu intensive while processign the mpg files using over 50% CPU utilization. Recording new TV while playing back TV and comskip is running at the same time seems to have a noticable performance hit in navigating the SageTv use interface. I found out the hard way that playing a slideshow through SageTV while SageTV was recording a TV show results in nearly unwatchable recordings that breakup in a pattern matching every slide change. The slideshow caused 100%CPU spikes when changing images. I hope a dual core CPU will improve the situation but I have not tried it.

There may be other add-ins that are CPU intensive in a way that will show dual core processors to have an advantage.


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