More Memory?

[Goodspike]

I've always heard that HTPCs really don't need much memory, but how about HTPCs running SageTV?

The reason I ask is my HTPC currently has 1 Gig, and I need to upgrade the memory on another machine to 1 Gig. They take the same type of memory.

So I could either buy one gig for the other machine, or if there is some benefit to more on the HTPC, I could buy 2 gigs for it and take the 1 gig out of it and put it into the other machine.

And to narrow this down, my machine does seem to have issues recording and watching a large file (anything over about 1.5 hours). Would more memory somehow help Windows deal with disc read/write issues?

[GKusnick]

For files that are read or written repeatedly, more RAM can help by keeping more of the file in memory. But for purely sequential file access, like reading or writing a video stream, it probably won't help much since each page is being read or written just once, which has to happen anyway no matter how much RAM you have.

The general rule of thumb is to bring up Task Manager, click on the Performance tab, and look at the Peak Commit Charge in the lower left corner. If that number is less that your currently installed RAM, then adding more won't make much difference.

[Goodspike]

Okay, if everyone is happy with that answer, asking the question just saved me some money! Thanks.

[Lucas]

That's right. At the moment 1Gb is plenty for SageTV.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by Lucas

That's right. At the moment 1Gb is plenty for SageTV.

But now that you said that, I'm thinking about Vista. I think it's probably more likely I'd buy a new PC with Vista than upgrade this one, and if I did upgrade, I could just buy another gig of memory for it.

For DDR the pairs only need to be matched as to manufacturer, right?

[phunny]

Greg

You said:
The general rule of thumb is to bring up Task Manager, click on the Performance tab, and look at the Peak Commit Charge in the lower left corner. If that number is less that your currently installed RAM, then adding more won't make much difference.
__________________

Sorry to ask this question but my commit Charge is
total 361584
limit 3517212
Peak 381368

Based your reply I'm ok when it comes to memory. But my system is so sluggish where else should I be looking. When playing something back in v6 it seems to pause. The menus are fast the play back is where im hurting. I am running on a promise raid card with 1.5tb on Maxtor 7200 sata drives under windows xp pro. I have 1.50gb of physical memory and running a pent4.0 2.8mhz cpu. Any ideas where I should be looking. A long with the Raid system I have on the same MB 2 hard drives 200 gb a piece. Think if I remove one id see improvement. When I sort processes by CPU I don't see much running. I would think on this box it would be screaming fast...

Thanks
Andy