Is 4GB adequate for SageTv on Win7?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by MrKrabs

Great!

Dear Sage,

Why does my system:
-Crash during playback often faulting in MPEGDemux.ax regardless of selected Codec and even when the Registry Utility is supposed to have disabled it
-Tell me no tuners are available which forces me to trick it by color calibrating the tuner in Video Sources that is there and wasn't in use
-Go into spinning circle endlessly randomly
-Pause LiveTV and then play in FF to catch up

Sincerely,
Mr Krabs

I think my time in the forums is over. People want to pretend this product is fine when it's not...enjoy yourselves.

PS which MythTV distro is best?

Never said it was perfect, but there are people willing to help you. Unfortunately I am no longer one of them.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Never said it was perfect, but there are people willing to help you. Unfortunately I am no longer one of them.

+1

As someone who had nothing but issues when switching from v6 to v7 I can understand the frustration, but I found out my windows install was to blame not sagetv. It is very hard for some to accept that, but we all learn in different ways.

[texneus]

Uhm, back to the original topic.

I run SageTV in Win7 (x86) just fine with 2GB. Before I installed a blue ray drive and needed to run SageTV and TMT3 at the same time, I ran SageTV with "just" 1GB. 6GB? 8GB? This is SageTV, not a high end Avid workstation. Keep it in perspective.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by texneus

Uhm, back to the original topic.

I run SageTV in Win7 (x86) just fine with 2GB. Before I installed a blue ray drive and needed to run SageTV and TMT3 at the same time, I ran SageTV with "just" 1GB. 6GB? 8GB? This is SageTV, not a high end Avid workstation. Keep it in perspective.

I ran mine perfectly with xp and 2gb (3 years) until I started getting out of memory errors, but that was just due to the specific plugins I use. SQL server uses 400mb by itself, and sage with everything I use is around 900mb. Not much left after that. Plus an extra 2gb was only $35 so I should be good for quite a while with 4gb. Usage never goes above 2.2gb. So yes 6-8gb would be pointless unless the server has lots of other jobs other than sage.

[doncote0]

The system requirements for SageTV V7 are 128MB of RAM at a minimum. The recommended minimum is 256MB.

So anything above 256MB could be called overkill. However, many OS's themselves also have their own minimum hardware requirements.
Windows XP requires 64 MB of memory at a minimum.
Windows 7 (x86) requires 1GB of memory at a minimum.
Windows 7 (X64) requires 2GB of memory at a minimum.

Add more memory and both Sage and Windows will try to take it.
Sage can grab up to 2GB due to the programming defaults that were used for this 32 bit application. I do not think Sage was created using the largeaddressaware feature, so that is all that Sage can currently use in 32 or 64 bit.

64 bit windows can take up to 4GB of memory and will try to if the memory is available. 32 bit windows can take up to 2GB of memory and will try to if the memory is available.

So the minimum memory should be a sum of the minimums for all software and hardware that is in use on the system up to the limit for the OS, chipset or motherboard.

Minimum Values
Windows XP with Sage (and nothing else) 192MB
Windows 7 (x86) with Sage (and nothing else) 1152MB
Windows 7 (X64) with Sage (and nothing else) 2176MB

Recommended Minimum Values
Windows XP with Sage (and nothing else) 256MB
Windows 7 (x86) with Sage (and nothing else) 1280MB
Windows 7 (X64) with Sage (and nothing else) 2304MB

Current Recommended Ideal Minimum Values Base on Software Response
Windows XP with Sage (and nothing else) 4GB *
Windows 7 (x86) with Sage (and nothing else) 4GB *
Windows 7 (X64) with Sage (and nothing else) 6GB

*32 bit systems only allow native access to 4GB, but chipsets may allow access to less than the full 4GB.

Add other applications Sage apps, web apps, AntiVirus, firewalls etc and the minimum memory issue becomes even more complicated. Everything that is running that has a minimum memory requirement will attempt to access that much memory at a minimum, but will access more if the system allows it (dynamic memory management from the system). Want XP mode? You'll need another 1GB of RAM (if you are not already at 4GB).

Since memory prices are so low, when upgrading I prefer to go to the maximum readily-available memory that my system and OS will support. Doing that maximizes my time between upgrades while minimizing effort and waste (of hardware or money).

If you do not agree, that's okay--this is not a debate. If you want your 32 bit Windows 7 system to run Sage using 1152MB of RAM, go for it. If you want your Windows XP system to run Sage using 192MB of RAM, go for it.

[sdsean]

Completely agree with the last post, you certainly can run with a lot less. . . but it sux when you start to do a bunch of things at once, and realize ur PC is getting taxed.

My machine is probably overkill, but I play an online game, have 4 recordings going, 3 of those to extenders, burn a blu-ray, and be transcoding a video all at the same time without every skipping a beat. . . that is just AWESOME.

Go with at least 6GB, as said RAM is cheap, and while it may not really be needed, the times when you are converting some video, sending feeds to 3 extenders, you'll be glad for it.