Sage & Client Performance Increase - NIC!

[coldtoes]

I've got another thread running here, but I just wanted to let people know about a performance increase I found while I was troubleshooting other issues. I found Sage to be quite laggy and slow, and I was really frustrated by the speed of my clients - they would take forever to make the connection with the server and when they were running they would skip a second or so every few minutes. I blamed the issue on the network connection (wireless clients, wired server) and started to freak my wife out by eyeing the walls and talking about how I should just run cables. You know - so I could have gigabit to every room in the house. Sometimes wives just don't share their husbands' priorities, and I was banned from making holes in the walls - even exploratory drilling!

Well, I was troubleshooting another issue with SageTV and going through the forums looking for ANY idea that might help me. I saw a post about USB PVRs and making sure that the USB had power-save disabled. That got me thinking.

I went through the Device Manager, looking for anything that was using power management that I was not aware of. The network adapter, in the device's "Power Management" tab, had an option to "Turn off this device to save power". I disabled this (removed the check mark) and rebooted. Ever since then, Sage has been amazingly fast. The UI on my Sage server has been extremely responsive. Where I noticed the biggest difference was on my clients - even the oldest, slowest one, furthest away from the wireless router is getting excellent picture quality (no skipping or missed time), fast UI response and quick connections with the server.

So - if you want to try this change on the server (I tried it on the clients, but didn't notice any difference):
- Go to Control Panel (Classic View)
- Double click on System
- Choose the "Hardware" tab
- Select "Device Manager"
- Go down the list, expand "Network Adapters"
- Select your Network adapter
- Right click on your network adapter and select properties
- If there is a power management tab, select it (if there isn't, you're SOL)
- If there is a checkbox that has the caption "Allow the Computer to Turn Off This Device to Save Power" and the checkbox is checked, click it once to uncheck the box.
- Click Ok or Apply at the bottom.

I would be interested in hearing if other people have positive experiences with this little tweak. It has made a big difference on my systems; I hope it helps. I've searched the forums and have not been able to find this tweak, so I hope it is a new one.

[Humanzee]

huh, mine was set to turn off the network card too. Ill have to give impressions after a couple of days.

[autoboy]

Good find. I tend to turn that stuff off too when I have issues. I'll see if that changes anything...

[mayamaniac]

I wonder how much power is saved with it on for Windows to have that setting ON by default.

[hemicuda]

My on-board 3com was already unchecked, but the pci SMC I put in for the HDHR was still checked. It isn't anymore.

[timnelsonic]

This appears to have cured an annoying issue I was having with my Sage HD Extender. Fairly frequently (about 33% of the time), my Extender would lock up with a black screen when I would power it on. It required a stop/start of the Sage service on my server to fix. This was killing my WAF and Sage customer support didn't have any good advice.

Anyway, I tried this trick just for the heck of it and I haven't seen the problem since. I'm guessing the Extender would attempt to access the server, the card would be asleep, and this would cause the lockup. This may be a coincidence but I've gone about a week with no issues so I'm pretty sure this really worked. Might be worth a try for others with misc. Extender lockup issues (I know there are a bunch of folks out there with hard-to-replicate issues).

Thanks for the tip!

[Humanzee]

Ok, so I don't notice any difference. Probably because my existing server sucks. New parts come for my new server tomorrow. Im going to just make sure that this power saving option is off. Maybe avoid a future problem.

[coldtoes]

Originally Posted by timnelsonic

This appears to have cured an annoying issue I was having with my Sage HD Extender. Fairly frequently (about 33% of the time), my Extender would lock up with a black screen when I would power it on. It required a stop/start of the Sage service on my server to fix. This was killing my WAF and Sage customer support didn't have any good advice.

Anyway, I tried this trick just for the heck of it and I haven't seen the problem since. I'm guessing the Extender would attempt to access the server, the card would be asleep, and this would cause the lockup. This may be a coincidence but I've gone about a week with no issues so I'm pretty sure this really worked. Might be worth a try for others with misc. Extender lockup issues (I know there are a bunch of folks out there with hard-to-replicate issues).

Thanks for the tip!

Very glad it helped. It has made me stop pulling my hair out...

[MrD]

this seems to helped me with the spinning icon of doom...

[valnar]

To add to this thread....

I cannot emphasize enough that a good Intel NIC - even if it means getting one for a "lowly" PCI slot - seems to work best of all. Based on my informal testing over the years of integrated NIC's, I place them in this order.

Intel
Marvell
Realtek
Broadcom
NVidia's nForce gigabit controller

Obviously there are others, but those are the current major players. My preference is in order of UDP streaming reliability.

-Robert

[wado1971]

Glad I ran across this thread!! I turned off the power management on my server (per coldtoes) & switched my client nic from nvidia to marvell (per valnar). Not sure which switch made the improvement but it's definitely more responsive - thanks both!

We really should initiate a "Beer of the Month Club" community sign-up on the forum. Simple sub-dollar donations put into a pool and distributed for the best suggestion that month........ Now that I'm thinking about it - how about raffling off some hd-pvr's for new stvi's - That might get the boards buzzin.