I've been noticing some stuttering while playing some video files (mostly HD wmv or xvid movies) and while running "top" I noticed that I have very little free memory (like 5 to 10MB) and lots of disk reads. Switching between different apps in the frontend (like starting a movie or closing it) takes a while as well. I'm pretty sure this is not a CPU issue as that rarely rises above 50% with any type of media. Here's a graph of memory usage over the last week.

My question is, would another 512MB stick of memory help at all?

Is there more to this question than I think? Anybody have any idea?

I had 512MB on a AMD 64bit 2800+ doing HD and some some "non-smooth" playback when the football was thrown during a NFL HD game. I added 512 and that smoothed it out.

I do get audio stuttering every time I switch channels and the OSD comes up. Top shows that its mythfrontend with a jump in CPU.

John

Before I built my system I did a lot of reading on what other people were using. This is going back months, but it seemed a lot of people were fine with 512, but it also seemed like a lot of people were recording in SD. HD and Xvid/Divx need more horsepower. Plus, expect things to get worse over time as you add upgrades, (linux) programs and tasks.

I have one gig and I'd call it adequate. I can record and watch HD without issue simultaneously. But if there's a background job running at the same time, I get LOTS of stutter playing an HD show.

Another 512mb is easy and inexpensive to add, do and let us know what happens. When you have trouble its a good idea to list all your system specs. I'm assuming you have an up-to-date CPU for example. And we don't know about your video card.

I've found that RAM usage is very dependent on your setup.

I have a 720p (1366x768) LCD panel so my display is set to 1368x768 where as someone else might be using a 800x600 display. All of our settings may be identical except for output resolution yet I need almost twice the RAM because my screen images (cached in memory) are twice as big.

I've also found that I can't use the Blootube-wide theme with less than 1 GB of RAM but other themes work fine with only 512 MB. This is due to the fact that the Blootube-wide theme uses hi-res images that in my case are scaled to 1368x768 and stored in memory where as other themes use much lower resolution images.

I guess the point I'm try to make is that just because someone says, "mine works fine with only 512 MB" doesn't mean that yours will.

I don't see too many people complaining about having too much RAM though. Another 512 sure can't hurt.

Martian

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ABIT NF-M2 nView | Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2GB DDR2 800 | HDHomerun | GeForce 6150 (onboard) | WD 640 GB SATA HD | DVD-RW (sata) | StreamZap IR receiver with Logitech Harmony remote

Vizio 37" LCD HDTV (1080p)

My specs right now:

So far it appears like the memory is the only thing bottlenecking. Right now I'm only running 480p over component (HDTV doesn't support 720P and isn't widescreen) and I'm going to eventually upgrade to a 1680x1050 LCD over DVI. 1GB enough or should I go with more? I'd like to match the sticks so I can get dual channel going, so I'd rather just add another 512MB.

Well, to me, your graph doesn't show any _need_ for more memory. Seems to me with the current setup more would just be used for cacheing disk blocks.

Did you enable XVMC for your video card?

No, I haven't yet because every other driver besides my current ones (can't remember off the top of my head 7184 I think) hate the component out on the video card. These don't support XvMC well so I've been waiting till I get my new display to start messing with it. I'm hoping that this will take some of the burden off of the system as well.

I have a 6200 card and use XVMC and component out. What kind of problems are you having?

If you're not going to have XVMC, then adding memory may not be enough. Look into overclocking your CPU.

I had a blue hue at one point and random flashes, then a blank screen at another. I got sick of dealing with it and just went back to what worked (sans XvMC) and decided I'd try it again when I get a display. I'm moving in to college next year and because of this I'll be using my computer monitor as my desktop display. I figure a 22" widescreen monitor will be pretty good at 5 feet or so.