First-Time-er
#1
i was looking into the Zotec ZBOX ID80-U with an internal 16gb solid-state drive and a 2tb external usb3.0 drive.

for running a smooth XBMCLive along with 1080p playback, how much ram would be recommendable? looks like it maxes out at 4gb. but would 2 be enough?

any other suggestions/advice?



What i Wonder Huh
Reply
#2
2 GB is enough for xbmc, just make sure that you allocate at least 512MB to video RAM
Reply
#3
so 2gb/512mb should be enough to play 1080p with a decent frame rate?


and ... 4gb of ram with 1gb allocated to video... would that be overkill?


What i Wonder Huh
Reply
#4
(2012-06-09, 23:38)whatiwonder Wrote: so 2gb/512mb should be enough to play 1080p with a decent frame rate?
yes
also 1gb/1gb will do just fine when running without desktop

(2012-06-09, 23:38)whatiwonder Wrote: and ... 4gb of ram with 1gb allocated to video... would that be overkill?
not overkill, but not necessary either. Xbmc itself does not need much Ram, but if you have other stuff running in the background it surely doesn't hurt.
Reply
#5
(2012-06-09, 23:44)wsnipex Wrote: Xbmc itself does not need much Ram, but if you have other stuff running in the background it surely doesn't hurt.

that sounds like a plan. might as well keep some space open. couldn't hurt, right?

also, what's the difference in performance between a SSD and an SD card? i know SD cards are cheaper and easier to find, but is the price difference/rarity worth it?
all i need is 16gb. but it's hard to find a good deal on an SSD in that size, and i don't want to pay a bundle to have anything bigger than that. i just need the OS/XBMC, and enough room to add simple apps like samba and such.


What i Wonder Huh
Reply
#6
Read and write speed on an SD card vs an SSD is eons slower. I'm sure XBMC would work on an SSD, it works just fine on a USB thumbdrive, but boot times, shutdown, and library compaction and cleaning would probably be faster on the SSD. I have a 64GB Crucial SSD and the one thing I noticed, other than boot times, was that updating via apt-get is wicked fast. The difference between the SSD and a spinning HDD is phenomenal.
Reply
#7
yeah, i realized a few minutes after posting, that usb, even usb 3.0 is no match for SATA. even hard disk drives are faster than a usb card reader.

but i'm having trouble finding a good 16gb SSD. any suggestions?
i don't need anything bigger than 16. it's just going to be for the OS/apps.



What i Wonder Huh
Reply
#8
If you want to install on an sd card, have a look at openelec. Both my xbmc boxes (which are ION based) run off 8GB SD cards using openelec. Boot time is under 20 seconds. I do have my thumbnails on a server. I ended up taking a 32GB SSD out of one of the boxes because in my setup, there was no speed difference between the SSD and SD card. But running anything other than something like openelec i'd go with an SSD drive.

I did try at one point putting xbmclive (dharma version i think it was) onto an SD card. It ran ok, but library updates and boot time was noticeably slower.

If you get an SSD, just grab a 30-40GB, these days they don't make much smaller.
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
First-Time-er0