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[michael123]

Hi

I am interested to know if anyone here found some use of the extra memory with 64-bit Windows.

In my case, I have Core i7 4770T, with 16GB RAM, and 128GB SSD;
Music is on NAS (unRAID)

thanks,

[InflatableMouse]

Well .. nothing really comes to mind that is MC-related. MC is pretty fast and optimized already.

This one is not memory related but make sure your MC library (not your music files) are on your SSD. If you didn't change your user profile path and didn't change folder settings in MC, it should be in your Roaming folder of your user profile. Just check to make sure I guess.

Are you having performance issues that made you ask this question or was it more a general inquiry?

You can post your Jmark score if you believe you're having performance issues. It's under Help/Benchmark.

[glynor]

With those specs, you likely wouldn't see substantial benefit from additional RAM, unless you're doing something crazy.  That is certainly a capable machine (though you didn't mention GPU).

I agree with InflatableMouse, generally, though.  Are you having trouble, or just wondering generally?

If you are seeing specific performance issues, then review this guide and follow the first steps.

If you are not, and are just curious if it could be "more betterer" with more RAM, then... Well, probably not.  It depends, largely, on what else you do with your computer, and what things you want to do at the same time as using Media Center.

But, if you're not doing memory intensive things like running VMs, editing video, playing games, crunching huge data sets, or whatever, then... Your money would almost certainly be better spent on something else (like a GPU or a larger system drive).

[JimH]

He reported a performance problem that turned out to be caused by Microsoft Security Essentials:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=86096.msg593883#msg593883

[glynor]

Ahh, thanks Jim.  Now I get it.  Michael, no.  Probably.

In almost all circumstances you will be better off leaving it well enough alone.

Technically, if you are a crazy person, you could probably speed up performance by running MC with the Library on a RAM disk.  But this would be a horrible idea for everyday usage.  RAM is volatile (it clears when you shut down the computer) so you'd have to sync this to a real disk whenever MC wasn't running somehow, and make sure it was recreated at next boot.  You could probably improve your JRMark for show off purposes, but... Meh.

If all of your media is on a Network Drive, especially a slow one (and unRAID can be slow), then make sure you review this part of my Troubleshooting Guide:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Center_Troubleshooting_Guide#Disks_and_Locations

There's an option that can help performance and some important notes about where you store the Library in there.

[michael123]

This one is probably applicable to me as well - indeed, what disabling of antivirus improved was the response when changing the playlist except for the first time

One other issue you can encounter relates to a particular option in MC. If many of your media files are stored on a slow external or network disk which often "disconnects" (or goes to sleep), performance in MC can suffer when viewing large lists of files. If you have your files on a slow disk like this, and you find that MC hangs for a long while when first launching, or when first opening a particular view in the tree, then try:
Options > Tree & View > Advanced > Display missing file image in lists: Disable
This option enables or disables the little red Xs that show up overtop of the icons or thumbnails for files that are missing from disk. This is a nice option to have enabled (because it immediately alerts you to files missing from disk), but it can be very slow if the files are on a "bad" disk.
Note: If you need to disable this option to get adequate performance, but you'd still prefer to use it, you can sometimes mitigate the performance impact by specially crafting the views you use in Media Center. If you are able to exclude large quantities of files (which are often "missing" or which you rarely need) from the views you typically use, and hide the "troublesome" files away in a specific use view elsewhere, then you may be able to improve usability while keeping this option enabled. The performance impact of this option depends largely on how many files are visible at once within a view that are on a slow disk. If you think you might be able to do this, and disabling the option above fixes your problem, feel free to ask for help on Interact and explain your disk setup.

Going to try now..