xbmc better performace achived

[kevyb]

I just wanted to make this thread for any noobie's such as my self what wanted to achive a plug and play xbmc device and have no previous know how about lunix

First of all i tried using the raspberian download from this website, i then downloaded xbmc manually, along with samba, wireless drivers. I found this way to be very laggy and slow.

I have discovered Openelec which is a lunix dist just for xbmc, this is alot faster then the previous method and pretty much works out the box, i did not have to download wireless drivers and a standard USB remote control worked out the box. For anyone wanting a pretty much plug and play with no command line interface i would suggest this to anyone (you can still access your command line via SSH)

The currently version of openelec xmbc uses 100% cpu on the main menu, this is because currently it is refreshing the screen at about 30fp/s this will be solved soon in the future updates. as soon as you open a program or play a video, that then gets all the cpu power, and i have found it plays HD video excellently without a stutter or delay on sound, I also found if you download any catch up tv programs such as Iplayer, although the interface is pretty simple it plays the video perfectly over wireless.

The main thing i did which i have seen a pretty good increase in performance is using a head sink i purchased of, The cpu temperature went down from 50C to 40C and the cpu usage has gone down to 92% this is at the normal 700% cpu speed, i felt no need to overclock mine although you can do this by editing some config file.

Hope this helps some people !

[jamesh]

Only thing I would add is that the heatsink will have made NO difference to performance. Dropping 50->40 will not affect performance at all - the processor will still be running at the same level whatever the temp (unless it goes over 85 when it will throttle itself to cool itself down)

[kevyb]

Actually i would disagree, there is a performance boost, it may be small but still existent not only that the 99p head sink will increase the longevity of board, would highly recommend a heat sink i anyone is going to be overclocking there board and anything over 75C on a arm processor will start to damage the components of the board !