HTPC / W7MC Lag

[jsteinm1]

I built my first HTPC about 6mo ago, with the following specs:

AMD A6-3500
4GB DDR3 1600 RAM
60GB SSD (OS/programs)
1.5tb 5400rpm Seagate Green
Ceton InfiniTV4

I works quite well, and I'm slowly working out the bugs in it. One annoyance I have with it, is the interface lags a little sometimes. I tend to get a wait period on 7MC shortly after beginning to use it after a period of time (HTPC does not go to sleep), And at some other intervals. I also use Media Browser which can take a bit to load up and navigate though some of the menus. I have a relatively small media collection - about 160 movies, 10TV series, and 2500 songs. My question is - is there any way to fix or alleviate this lag? If not, does anyone know what my limiting hardware is? I think I have enough CPU for all that it does, and the SSD should help. Would my media being on a 7200RPM drive make it load faster?

 

[af22]

If your media library is done caching, the only time it would lag is when your HD is spinning up, or if you have video playing in the background while navigating menus.

I did notice a big boost in menu navigating when i upgraded my video card from the on-board to a GT 520. However, now i'm running an ivy bridge with HD3000 and it's snappy.

 

[jsteinm1]

If your media library is done caching, the only time it would lag is when your HD is spinning up, or if you have video playing in the background while navigating menus.

I did notice a big boost in menu navigating when i upgraded my video card from the on-board to a GT 520. However, now i'm running an ivy bridge with HD3000 and it's snappy.

When you upgraded to the GT 520, we're you using an AMD APU for graphics? I don't really want to add a discreet card because I think its unnecessary and I am very space limited. I wouldn't have guessed GPU lag however.

 

[Xonim]

The lag when you're first starting to use it is definitely from your hard drives spinning up. My HTPC has 2x Samsung F4's and 1x WD Green for storage, plus OS/programs on a 64GB SSD. The F4's take about 10-12 seconds to spin up, and 7MC appears to freeze while that's happening (usually when trying to enter Media Browser). The WD green is a bit faster, probably 7-8 seconds. That's normal behavior.

If you have lag after you're in Media Browser, I'd make sure that your image/thumbnail cache is on the SSD. If it's already there, do a full clear of the MB cache and rebuild it.

Don't bother with a discrete graphics card. Your APU is better than my i3-2100 + Intel HD 2000 graphics, and I don't have any problems with responsiveness beyond the drive spinup.

EDIT: 5400rpm drives are fine for media storage. I wouldn't waste the money putting 7200rpm drives in there.

 

[jsteinm1]

The lag when you're first starting to use it is definitely from your hard drives spinning up. My HTPC has 2x Samsung F4's and 1x WD Green for storage, plus OS/programs on a 64GB SSD. The F4's take about 10-12 seconds to spin up, and 7MC appears to freeze while that's happening (usually when trying to enter Media Browser). The WD green is a bit faster, probably 7-8 seconds. That's normal behavior.

If you have lag after you're in Media Browser, I'd make sure that your image/thumbnail cache is on the SSD. If it's already there, do a full clear of the MB cache and rebuild it.

Don't bother with a discrete graphics card. Your APU is better than my i3-2100 + Intel HD 2000 graphics, and I don't have any problems with responsiveness beyond the drive spinup.

EDIT: 5400rpm drives are fine for media storage. I wouldn't waste the money putting 7200rpm drives in there.

Thanks, I'll check and rebuild my cache for MB. I won't be adding any HDDs to it, I plan to move all media except recorded TV to network storage toward the end of the year. Currently I'm over lack luster wifi for the HTPC, so I'm also waiting for 802.11ac to hopefully get me closer to par with a wired connection.

 

[dan87]

In the BIOS make sure you allocate as much RAM as possible to the APU.