Silent Screamer Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 One of my HDD drives has died in a PC I currently don't use much, so since I need to go get a new HDD I thought I might look into a RAM upgrade while I was at it. The two PCs I have were state of the art back in the late naughties but today are not so flash (still quite ok... but I digress), so I took the 8GB (2 x 4GB) of DDR3 1333 out of my HTPC and put it in my spare PC so now it has 8GB of DDR3 1333 and 2 x 1GB sticks of DDR3 1033 for a total of 10GB. Since all the slots were used up in the old PC I put 2 x 1GB sticks back in the HTPC and fired it back up, to my surprise it fired up Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit and Kodi just fine in fact I have a movie playing right now. So I guess my question is how much is too little, since I was about to go down to MSY and buy 2 x 8GB DDR 1600 RAM for the HTPC. Is there a gain to be had by putting more RAM back in the HTPC? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roh008 Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 So I guess my question is how much is too little, Ans: when it’s not enoughSorry couldn’t resist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Screamer Posted November 17, 2017 Author Share Posted November 17, 2017 Yeah a fair point but is it worth spending $200 if there is no gain to be had? Will it use more RAM for HQ movies, or is that purely video RAM? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roh008 Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 4GB is low but good for 64bit. 8GB is enough. But 16GB is relatively cheap these days but over kill just for kodi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roh008 Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 Also for effective dual channel you are better of having 2x4 GB sticks or 2x2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Screamer Posted November 17, 2017 Author Share Posted November 17, 2017 (edited) So maybe I just pinch the two 1GB sticks out of the other PC (which I plan to setup Hyper-V on) and spend a few dollars on a better video card for the HTPC since it is currently using the integrated video and some of that 2GBs of RAM. That would make it 4GB of identical RAM with 2GB of dedicated video RAM. I was going to pinch the 1GB video card out of the other PC (since it was about $900 at the time) but I can buy a better 2GB card for sub $100 these days for the HTPC. Edited November 17, 2017 by Silent Screamer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hochopeper Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 1 minute ago, Silent Screamer said: So maybe I just pinch the two sticks back out of the other PC (which I plan to setup Hyper-V on) and spend a few dollars on a better video card for the HTPC since it is currently using the integrated video and some of that 2GBs of RAM. I was going to pinch the 1GB video card out of the other PC (since it was about $900 at the time) but I can buy a better 2GB card for sub $100 these days for the HTPC. There is no reason that integrated video card is an issue for HTPC. Kodi still accelerates using integrated video and the big benefit there is that CPU utilisation drops, user interface stays responsive, fans aren't spinning up etc. My HTPC is a chromebox with Intel® Celeron 2955U, 2GB RAM (not sure if it is 2 or 4), 16GB storage and HD Graphics 4000. I've installed librelec on it and I see no need for higher specs other than maybe if I had something 4k I really wanted to watch maybe? I've got a 2yo daughter so 4k Wiggles maybe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Screamer Posted November 17, 2017 Author Share Posted November 17, 2017 (edited) With the 8GB of RAM I was getting the occasional frame freeze (infrequent). But with 2 x 1GB stick in at the moment and I run DXDiag: HD Graphics 4600 total memory 768MB (Current display 1920 x 1080 (32bit) 60Hz. i5-4570 CPU @ 3.2Ghz (4 CPUs) Task Manager shows CPU usage is between about 8-12% (movie running) used physical memory is showing as 1.15 GB, showing 60 used% Stopping Koding CPU usage fell to 0-1% and used physical memory usage dropped to 42%, So I guess this tells me of the 1.15GB of RAM that was being used Windows was using 42% of it and Kodi something like 20% of it. Putting the other 2 x 1 GB sticks back in would lower the percentage Windows uses, but it would seem 1GB is enough to run Windows 7 provided you don't load up a ton of apps. The unknown here is how much of the 768MB reserved memory is being used by the internal video. Edit: If Kodi is using 20% of the available memory that would suggest it is using page filing to buffer the video. Edited November 17, 2017 by Silent Screamer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Screamer Posted November 17, 2017 Author Share Posted November 17, 2017 Just put the other 2 x 1GB sticks back in back to 4GB. Started Kodi and playing same movie used memory now showing 1.3GB suggesting more memory is being allocated to the video since previously the free memory which is now 2025 was previously showing 27. As expected physical memory has dropped back to 33% used. CPU usage look to have dropped a couple of percent to slightly under 10% now averaging around 8%, so it would seem slightly less paging. The interesting thing is in DXDiag the approx total memory is now showing 1698 MB where it was previously showing 768MB. Proving the system is trying to use more of the physical memory. Page File sitting at 1585 MB used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Muon N' Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 4 gig is plenty unless you use very hungry programs and a hungry OS or are really heavy on intensive programs and multitasking, with Win7. 2 gig is bad as the sway file will get used and that will thrash ya' HDD and it will live a shorter life as well as being slower. Vista likely will like a bit more than 7 as It's a dog of a OS. Then there are badly written programs that might hold ram even after It's been killed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Screamer Posted November 17, 2017 Author Share Posted November 17, 2017 (edited) Decided to bite the bullet on a new video card since it has been so long since I did anything with this PC and I kind of future proofed myself (if there is such a thing). Bought a 4GB card figuring it will carry me through until 8k is ready and even then I am unlikely to upgrade when I buy a 4k projector. This is only ever going to be a HTPC so until it breaks I think this is the final config (with the exception of a decent sound card). Have changed the video in the BIOS over to PCIe so Windows should now see the full 4GB of DDR3. Edited November 17, 2017 by Silent Screamer 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Screamer Posted November 18, 2017 Author Share Posted November 18, 2017 Well there's a turn up for the books I didn't expect to see this... A large portion of the time the 3.2Ghz quad core processor is maxed out while trying to play a 4k file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Screamer Posted November 18, 2017 Author Share Posted November 18, 2017 So while the movie plays with some jitter and buffering it does actually play now, the navigation through the Kodi menu is a lot quicker and smoother than before, proving the extra video RAM has had a positive outcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roh008 Posted November 18, 2017 Share Posted November 18, 2017 3 hours ago, Silent Screamer said: So while the movie plays with some jitter and buffering it does actually play now, the navigation through the Kodi menu is a lot quicker and smoother than before, proving the extra video RAM has had a positive outcome. so even though you had a GPU the CPU was doing the processing for 4k movies? Sounds like Kodi isn't offloading the work to the GPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Screamer Posted November 18, 2017 Author Share Posted November 18, 2017 Does look that way unless the processor is working overtime trying to allocate memory from the system. Which it shouldn't be since I set the graphics to PCIe as primary in the BIOS. Has a lot of cached memory there in the picture... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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