[popcornmix]

Why enable force_turbo?

Because it goes faster with force_turbo.

The cpu_freq driver is quite good at determining when the turbo mode is needed, but as it only makes decision about every 10ms there is a little lag between the arm getting busy and the clock increasing.

When continuously very busy or very idle, there is no problem, but when the cpu load is rapidly changing you do find a small amount of responsiveness is lost by the cpu_freq driver's lag.

[koze]

But to 'get the most out of the pi' and running Frodo, you could simply save a lot of trouble and update to a beta of Gotham. The difference between Frodo and Gotham is HUGE in terms of speed for the PI.

Will Gotham Beta compatible with all my repositories and plugins installed and worked on Frodo?
A few months ago I had Gotham but some of my plugins wouldn't worked, so I was told to switched back to Frodo.
Since than no problem.
But going through the post I see that switching to Gotham I can get some more speed which I need.

Thanks for your info.

koze

[mcarni]

Guys,

I am very happy with the general performances of my raspberry, anyway I am curious to know if it is possible to decrease the time it takes to access the "artist" view once you click on "music" or the time it takes to get to the list of movies once you click on "movies" on the home window.

From home window to artist view (low list, Amber) it takes 16s, (going to back to home window and accessing the artist view again it gives me 10s the second to access the view, 6s all the following times)


My setup is the following:
Raspberry 256
Latest release from Milhouse (17/04/14)
gpu_mem_256=128, arm_freq=1000, core_freq=510, sdram_freq=510, over_voltage=6, force_turbo=0
DISK is on an NFS share (I need to access the media files form other computers)
skin is amber (gui resolution set to 720p)
I use the Texture Cache Maintenance Utility from Milhouse (not with Cron, just when I feel the need...)
Music Library, approx. 5500 songs, 50GiB

Is there any setting or option that I can change to squeeze something more out of my Raspberry?
Would it make sense to have a mysql shared library ?(I am not very keen since my nas is basically my router with Openwrt installed on it, not particularly fast..)
Any suggestion?

Thanks a lot

and thanks to Popcornmix, Openelec and XBMC devs, Milhouse fro the amaing job!

M

[Milhouse]

When you access the library (music or movies) it queries the database and creates a cache file containing the media items in .xbmc/temp. On subsequent library access XBMC reads this cache file so that it can avoid the database query. You're writing/reading this cache file over NFS, and you're also accessing you local SQLite databases and thumbnail images over NFS. You'd typically see better performance with disk= using SD or USB instead of NFS.

You say you are using NFS because you need to share media - your media source has nothing to do with where you store your local data. You don't need to use NFS for disk= to share media files.

[mcarni]

You'd typically see better performance with disk= using SD or USB instead of NFS.

I knew I forgot something....
NFS boot and storage are probably coming back to when we were concerned about corruption, I am not sure why I did switch back "boot" to the sd and not "disk"...probably I just forgot


I did as you suggested and moved disk to a USB and I could see the performance improvement (3s from home window to artist view)

I believe also FF and RW with dvdpalyer are smoother

I moved also boot to the usb... not sure if this brings any advantage...I will paly a bit with it...

Thanks, you have been of great help


M

[Milhouse]

I moved also boot to the usb... not sure if this brings any advantage...I will paly a bit with it...

None whatsoever, you've also just broken the update mechanism (it may appear to work, but will be writing the firmware to /flash on the USB which is no good). Boot from SD only (boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1) if you intend to update successfully in future..

[mcarni]

I moved also boot to the usb... not sure if this brings any advantage...I will paly a bit with it...

None whatsoever, you've also just broken the update mechanism (it may appear to work, but will be writing the firmware to /flash on the USB which is no good). Boot from SD only (boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1) if you intend to update successfully in future..

okidoki, before you posted, I forced an update to see if updating was working...but I couldn't be sure...

I will revert back to boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1


Thanks again

[relative]

Hi guys,

I am trying to max out my raspberry pi. I have a USB3 16gb flashdrive, Class 10 8gb sandisk SD, 1.5 amp power supply, heatsinks and a fan, running frodo. It is currently running at 109F playing a 1080 movie with 97-100% cpu usage and around 25% memory.

Can I dedicate more RAM to the GPU?
Is there a way to speed up the LAN transfer, it seems like it skips frames sometimes.

What other settings can I change to max it out?

Thanks

Here are my settings:

# default GPU memory split (do not change if you do not know what you are doing)
gpu_mem=128

# SDRAM size based GPU memory split, uncomment and setup to override 'gpu_mem'
gpu_mem_256=100
gpu_mem_512=128

################################################################################
# Overclocking settings
# WARNING: Do not change/enable if you do not know what you are doing!
# The System may become unstable or you can have data corruption or
# you can loose your warranty if you set wrong settings
#
# please read: http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt#Overclo...figuration
################################################################################

# Overclock mode settings.
#
# default recommended values are: arm_freq | core_freq | sdram_freq | over_voltage
# no overclocking : 700 | 250 | 400 | 0
# mode 'Modest' : 800 | 300 | 400 | 0
# mode 'Medium' : 900 | 333 | 450 | 2
# mode 'High' : 950 | 450 | 450 | 6
# mode 'Turbo' : 1000 | 500 | 500 | 6

arm_freq=1100
core_freq=550
h264_freq=300
isp_freq=0
v3d_freq=300
sdram_freq=600
over_voltage_sdram=6
over_voltage=8
temp_limit=176
avoid_pwm_pll=1

# set to 'force_turbo=1' to disable dynamic overclocking (you can lose your warranty!)
force_turbo=1

# If you have any data corruption using Turbo Mode and overclocking
# try with this setting uncommented
# If this still fails, try to use Medium mode without "over_voltage=2"
# If it ultimately keeps failing, forget about this until it gets fixed
# Use a more conservative mode that will works fine in any cases:
# initial_turbo=30

################################################################################
# Overscan settings
################################################################################

# Make display smaller to stop text spilling off the screen
# see also http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewto...67&t=15700
# overscan_scale=1
# disable_overscan=1

# Adapt overscan values to your needs
# overscan_left=57
# overscan_right=59
# overscan_top=20
# overscan_bottom=20

################################################################################
# various settings see also: http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt
################################################################################

# Force HDMI even if unplugged or powered off
# hdmi_force_hotplug=1

################################################################################
# License keys to enable GPU hardware decoding for various codecs
# to obtain keys visit the shop at http://www.raspberrypi.com
################################################################################

# decode_MPG2=0x00000000
# decode_WVC1=0x00000000
# decode_DTS=0x00000000
# decode_DDP=0x00000000

################################################################################
# End of default configuration
# all values below this line were inserted from config.txt.bk (your old config)
# and can be merged with the above values
################################################################################

Aren't there some reliability issues with running the main processor at this temperature?

[popcornmix]

Aren't there some reliability issues with running the main processor at this temperature?

Why do you say that?
We say 85C is the temperature limit (which is 185F).
109F is 43C which is quite low.

[AlderaaN]

Getting my first RPi in a couple of weeks.

Would like to thank everyone in this thread for their feedback!

[Dam0]

just looking over your config..

doesnt this section seem a little ambiguous??

Code:

# default GPU memory split (do not change if you do not know what you are doing)
gpu_mem=128

# SDRAM size based GPU memory split, uncomment and setup to override 'gpu_mem'
gpu_mem_256=100
gpu_mem_512=128

Dam0

[popcornmix]

doesnt this section seem a little ambiguous??

It's well defined.
gpu_mem_256 takes precedence on a 256M Pi
gpu_mem_512 takes precedence on a 512M Pi

So the initial gpu_mem is ignored.

[MediaPi]

arm_freq=1100
core_freq=550
h264_freq=300
isp_freq=0
v3d_freq=300
sdram_freq=600
over_voltage_sdram=6
over_voltage=8
temp_limit=176
avoid_pwm_pll=1

why bother with avoid_pwm_pll=1 isn't this default?
why overclock h243, it can already do 1080p.
setting isp_freq=0 defaults it to 250 or was it equal to the highest of v3d/h264. If you really want you can set it to isp_freq=1 then using vcgencmd you'll see it comes up as 0
shoudn't h264 be a divisor of core?

keep settings at 1100/500/600 and maybe 6/4 for over voltage/over voltage sdram. anything else and your seeing incremental speed change (if any) and possible instability.

[AlderaaN]

..
..
temp_limit=176

Hello. Perhaps you should read this thread again.

temp_limit=176

I think you'll find the Pi measures its temperature in Celsius, not Fahrenheit, and the default is 85C.

It looks like you're setting a temp_limit of 176C, which would allow the Pi to cook itself. To set a temp_limit of 176F, you'd need to set temp_limit=80.

Edit:
It's also noted here:
http://elinux.org/RPiconfig#Overclocking_options

[popcornmix]

why bother with avoid_pwm_pll=1 isn't this default?

No - it degrades analogue audio qulity by not using a dedicated PLL, so isn't a default.
It is only useful when you want more control over the choices for h264/v3d/isp compared to gpu core.

why overclock h243, it can already do 1080p.

Yes. I don't think there is any benefit to overclocking h264/v3d/isp when running xbmc.
Set core_freq=500 if it works for you, and leave h264/v3d/isp on default.