Any idea if upgrading my SO-DIMM DDR2 memory from 2GB to 4GB will make the XBMC Live run silky smooth? I am running XBMC on Ubuntu 10 and it runs great with 2GB aside from cover flow and certain skins such as Aeon (it takes a few seconds sometimes to switch between movies)
This is for an Acer Aspire Revo 1600 nettop. But maybe the bottleneck isn't the RAM?
Thanks
I've left mine with the original 2gig and haven't had any problems.
Not really conclusive, but ...
i dont think it helps because:
a. the revo 1600 is based on a 32bit CPU so more then 3GB cant be used
b. i am sure you are not running out of ram actually
if you want try
OpenELEC, maybe it helps a bit on your setup (you can try run from usb stick before you install this on your hdd)
i am certain your bottle-neck is the slow single-core atom processor, not your RAM. You may get a little better use on openelec but from my experience it won't make a huge amount of difference. I have the 3610 and gave up on the Aeon skin, now using the excellent Alaska and have no complaints since.
I guess you could take a view by simply looking at
System -> System Info -> Summary within XBMC. This will tell you how much RAM you're using.
If it helps, my Revo 3600 is reporting as 2771MB total, 2551MB free - that's with 4Gb on board. Acer explain where the RAM has gone to on
this site. It's not that the Atom can't address the full 4GB, it's just that the architecture of the box eats it:
Quote:256 megabytes (MB) is assigned as video memory (I have this set to 512MB in the BIOS - certainly one advantage of more RAM).
A total of 512 MB is used for PCI hardware resources.
256 MB is dedicated to PCI Express hardware resources.
... so that's 1.25GB gone, 2.75 left, give or take a bit. And XBMC and the OS is taking up a whole 220MB when it's not playing anything (Confluence skin, XBMC PVR pre-11) - bear in mind the OS, though, and how memory is used and how swap typically reflects RAM. On my system, that figure goes up by about 120MB when I'm playing a 1080p h.264 file at 2.5Mb/s, so still within the 2Gb I had originally.
You could always open a shell and use
top or similar to measure whether it's the CPU or memory that's slowing you down. I originally upgraded to try to get Vista to work properly before I gave up on the concept of "properly" and deleted it - not sure if I'd bother now.
Mind you, my CPU(s) hardly break sweat either because of the VDPAU acceleration. I love my little ION box!
sraue Wrote:i dont think it helps because:
a. the revo 1600 is based on a 32bit CPU so more then 3GB cant be used
b. i am sure you are not running out of ram actually
if you want try OpenELEC, maybe it helps a bit on your setup (you can try run from usb stick before you install this on your hdd)
The revo 1600 uses an atom 230, which is x64 compatible. I'm running a x64 OS on one right now, so statement a is simply not true. Your problem is not RAM, but rather your bottleneck is the CPU. There are a few tricks though like enabling DDS fanart which will speed up your experience considerably.
If the OP hasnt enabled DDS fanart, then try that. I have 2 1600s and helped browsing between movies so that it is pretty instant. Changing between menus on Aeon M2Q however is sluggish as cpu is the bottleneck there it appears.
But definately try enabling DDS fanart in advancedsettings.xml on the 1600 if one hasnt.
I tend to use my iPhone XBMC App for browsing movies anyways heheh
So maybe I can just get by with the Alaska skin. It seems to run faster than Aeon.
Hi, guys
I have an ACER revo 1600 with some modifications. More ram, new ssd and win7 ultimate.
I wanted to upgrade its feautures more, so i ordered a new 3300 cpu to make it run faster. Afterwards i realized that mb and cpu are one piece and it seems impossible to install the new cpu. Or i think so...
Do you have any suggestions if it is possible such an upgrade and how? Thx four your answers
You cannot update the CPU. But you can upgrade your OS. Try openelec.