Insufficiant umph in MII12000

bes51659 · 02-15-2008, 03:37 AM

I am selling my MII12000 because it just is not powerful enough!

Am I the only one haveing problems with lame CPU?

Or am I trying to run to much on the same time? If not I am surpriced that this is regarded "the carpc" pc, and sold shamelessly by mp3car and cartft and others.

I am buying a Commell LV-679D with 1GB RAM and an INTEL Core2Duo T7100 800FSB 1.8Ghz. I hope this will sort me out.

I've made a simple benchmark my MII12000
It will be really interesting to get the corresponding numbers for the new PC.

Playback of 256kbit encoded song in mediaplayer

To the left part without VNC running and to the right with. The Mediaplayer process is only 10-22%. (on my desktop pc same number is 0-1%)

Rip of entire CD

USB DVD and IDE HDD. 256kbit mp3, coded by mediaplayer. VNC not running.

224MB memory, 100% CPU, done in 19 minutes. Much _much_ longer if music is played at the same time.

PowerDVD

Runs but taskmanager does not give any numbers and it is a bit unsteady. Will hang if you for instance pause. It is a don't touch application.

WinTV

Simply does not work. You might get a first screen shoot, but no sound.

****

What do you think?

walstib · 02-15-2008, 12:22 PM

I think it could be many things...

First, I am assuming you are running XP pro? Have you looked into nlite?
Have you done any optimization at all?
How many processes are running after booting only the OS?
Have you disabled all unused ports?
Are you constantly scanning wifi for access points?
etc...

I have a Via Nano with a 1 GHz proc and 512 MB RAM and my system seems to do pretty well.

2k1Toaster · 02-15-2008, 01:24 PM

MII12k is more than beefy enough. I had a M10k and it was just fine for CarPC use, just not powerful enough to run AutoCAD/Photoshop on the go which I do.

Also, such a high process % for your frontend is not good. Try RoadRunner. On the M10k, it is about 5% (higher on load obviously), and is the "Mediacar Clone" that is currently being developed and optimized. It even uses mediacar skins I think, but that is before my time.

Also something that you should change is the memory allocated to the video. I know on my old M10k, the default was 32Mb or something. Way insufficient. Up it to like 128Mb or 256Mb. If you are only using 512Mb of RAM total, you may want to use 128. Since 1Gb of RAM is only a few bucks on ebay, you may want to spring for that before a whole new system.

The new system you selected is very much overkill for CarPCs. It wont lag for sure, but neither will your M12k. And just to let you know, I used a full non-optimized install of XP Pro on my little via board, and it was speedy as can be for music, video, nav.

For your video problems, make sure you have the correct codecs and video drivers. If nothing plays, then probably codec. If it plays but is really choppy, you need the video drivers. Video drivers could also be a big problem for your above system. Default XP drivers work, but they are very very very slow and unoptimized. So on the m12k with default video drivers, you will get what you are experiencing.

bes51659 · 02-15-2008, 04:12 PM

Thanks guys! productive responces! I like it :-)

Quote: Originally Posted by walstib

How many processes are running after booting only the OS?
Have you disabled all unused ports?
Are you constantly scanning wifi for access points?

Thanks for the links. I found the process-link very nice. I will take a closer look at the others when I get my new PC and see how much system can be tweeked.

I have not made any real optimization on the os as you figured. I am running winxp pro. I am not scanning wifi, but I do have a problem with USB from time to time and hibernation. I planned to disable them all at exit with "devcon" when I desided to buy new hw and put that aside. At the time of measurement all USB devices were on and working.

One thing that struck my eye:

.. and how at the same time...

Isn't that contradictory ?? 60% or 98% idle ??

Quote: Originally Posted by 2k1Toaster

Also, such a high process % for your frontend is not good.

Also something that you should change is the memory allocated to the video. I know on my old M10k, the default was 32Mb or something. Way insufficient.

I have no front end at all during this measurements :-)

You might be onto something when it comes to graphics... I use an old "GeForce MX4000 PCI 64MB" because it is supported by powerstrip. The onboard graphics of MII12000 does not support 480x800 which also was a reason for replacing it to be fair.

Could that be the explanation to the +40% cpu load at the same time as idle-process is 90%....

bes51659 · 02-16-2008, 05:23 AM

Walstip's ProcessQuickLink pointed me at "SpeedUpMyPC" at 30USD.
Any good?

DarquePervert · 02-16-2008, 06:55 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by bes51659

Walstip's ProcessQuickLink pointed me at "SpeedUpMyPC" at 30USD.
Any good?

IMHO, a waste of money.
It doesn't do anything that you can't do yourself by removing startup items, turning off services and such.

walstib · 02-16-2008, 09:54 AM

It was just to show that you need to know how many processes are running and what they do. Here is a fair write-up of services, what they are, how to stop them, etc. This one is a little more indepth.

stroths · 02-16-2008, 10:04 AM

I use a nice little freeware program called Startup Control Panel to control what runs on startup. It won't help with services though.

http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

bes51659 · 02-16-2008, 12:29 PM

It was a waste of money. I should have bought booze and gotten something out of it.

I ran it and now mediaplayer is 24-42%. x2 higher after it did some memory tuning. (or some other improvement it dig)

But why does graph say so much more? Idle task is 100% - mediaplayer - maybe 5-10% (taskmanager and explorer. (Shell?))

Anyways. I'll prefer tuning the new pc when it arrives. Thanks guys.

walstib · 02-17-2008, 04:42 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by bes51659

It was a waste of money. I should have bought booze and gotten something out of it.

Holy crap! I never said to buy anything. What I pointed you to was a free utility. Sorry if you wasted $$ on anything.

bes51659 · 02-17-2008, 06:02 PM

Don't worry about it!

Acctually the CPU load went down significantly when I uninstalled it :-)

bes51659 · 03-06-2008, 03:43 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by bes51659

I am buying a Commell LV-679D with 1GB RAM and an INTEL Core2Duo T7100 800FSB 1.8Ghz. It will have a 64GB Samsung SSD. I hope this will sort me out.

I've made a simple benchmark my MII12000
It will be really interesting to get the corresponding numbers for the new PC.

Playback of 256kbit encoded song in mediaplayer

To the left part without VNC running and to the right with. The Mediaplayer process is only 10-22%. (on my desktop pc same number is 0-1%)

Rip of entire CD

USB DVD and IDE HDD. 256kbit mp3, coded by mediaplayer. VNC not running.

224MB memory, 100% CPU, done in 19 minutes. Much _much_ longer if music is played at the same time.

PowerDVD

Runs but taskmanager does not give any numbers and it is a bit unsteady. Will hang if you for instance pause. It is a don't touch application.

WinTV

Simply does not work. You might get a first screen shoot, but no sound.

Playback of 256kbit encoded song in mediaplayer

Without VNC

Rip of entire CD

With VNC. Rip complete in 3-4 minutes. I do not see any difference if I use playback at the same time or not.

PowerDVD

I cannot run it yet. I need a proper graphics driver first.

WinTV

Workes and is stable. Will "stumble" from time to time, but I think that is due to bad reception. Load is about 20%.

**********************

Maybe this is overkill, but not by a lot. Too me this is the difference between painful and useable. You guys out there with less powerful PC's must be masters in tweaking your systems. I'm just surpriced there is not so much complaining :-)

Cheers, B-O