New PC for Anan Suggestion

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ik7ytt
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Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2019 11:48 am

New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby ik7ytt » Thu Jul 18, 2019 8:53 am

Hello

i'm using my laptop with I7-7600U-12gb ram-ssd at moment, with medium low result.
i'm not having audio glitches problems but still the cpu is stressed at 30% constantly and if i open browser (chrome) and log or other software then all the system is super slow. having 2 LAn is not helping anyway.

i have tried other 2 business desktop pc with i7/ssd/8gb ram (not gaming or server m/b or other accessories) with similar poor result.

now i found out this the intel NUC8I7HVK (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... i7hvk.html), portable gaming computer, that seams has very good characteristics and a lot of connections even with 2 gigabit lan and wifi.

any suggestions?

(ps.....looking for portable solution so cannot have a big tower or rack server)
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w-u-2-o
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Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby w-u-2-o » Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:19 pm

I run a very similar setup: i7-7700, 16GB, SSD. That's a pretty powerful PC. With a few browser windows open, Thetis or PowerSDR running, and few other odds an ends, 30% is completely normal:

Capture4.JPG
Capture4.JPG (101.54 KiB) Viewed 11622 times


If you do the math, you'll see that 10% of the CPU load is background processes. I've not taken any special steps to reduce or limit my background processes, of which I have 94 on my PC at this time.

It is worth noting that Thetis (or PowerSDR), will usually be the biggest consumer of CPU resources. I run my spectral display update rate at 60Hz and 2.93Hz bin width, and in a window that consumes most of the 4K monitor. If you make any of those parameters smaller (lower update rate, larger bin width, smaller window), that will reduce your CPU requirements by quite a bit. The reason for this is because PowerSDR and Thetis use old-fashioned techniques for drawing on the display. If someone would rewrite the software to use a modern graphics API like DirectX then CPU requirements would probably drop by half. Case in point: SDR-Console, which does many of the same things as PowerSDR, uses DirectX, and normally consumes less than 10% CPU.

Bottom line: I would stick with the PC you have. An i7-7600 with 8 or 16GB of RAM is a very powerful PC. If 30% CPU bothers you then you might go through an exercise of eliminating background software and processes. If you perform a Google search like this: "eliminate background processes for better gaming", or similar search terms, you will find a lot of information on the topic.

73,

Scott
K9RX
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Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby K9RX » Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:34 pm

An i7-7700 should be more than enough! I was getting usage in the 12 - 16% range using an i5 before going to my current i7-8770 which now routinely is in the 5 - 7% range... the one thing that I found made a substantial difference was going to a sample rate of 192Khz as opposed to what at the time I preferred which was 96Khz. Since having done that (most) all of my woes have disappeared. It was a big difference for me. The FT8 TX waveform issues for the most part went away - now it is rare when I see anything and always without exception I can change the affinity and 'clean up' the transmit. I stopped bothering with the resampler - just not necessary!

IF you are using 96Khz you might try this ... if not I'd keep looking it over as again most any i7 should handle this with relative ease.

Gary
K9RX
ik7ytt
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Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby ik7ytt » Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:19 am

Hello

i have tryend already all the possible metods to avoid background processes ,even before anan.

this is Thesis on stadby mode. is more then 30%...

task manager.jpg
task manager.jpg (201.56 KiB) Viewed 11578 times


my CPu is I-7600U , but i found out that U versions are slower and for laptop to extend battery life. this one has only 2 cores. i guess this is one of the problems.

@Scott you say that Thesis need high graphic resources because is old software. can be that i need pc or laptop with dedicated card?
this laptop and the other desktop i have tried they both have intel integrated video card that really is working under the main cpu , so may be cpu is working more and for this have so high %.

can be the missing of a dedicated Video card the problem?

@gary:
Changing the sample rato from 192 to 96 doesn't help the differences irrelevant on my problem.
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w-u-2-o
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Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby w-u-2-o » Fri Jul 19, 2019 12:00 pm

I really don't know if a separate GPU will help. But it can't hurt!
K9RX
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Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby K9RX » Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:15 pm

it made no difference when I went to one, to my chagrin.

Gary
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ik7ytt
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Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby ik7ytt » Thu Jul 25, 2019 2:06 am

I add a VGA card and i see some improvement on a simple desktop pc.
So with a good designed one will have no problem for sure.
On laptop unfortunately cannot improve in anyway. Unless change it.

With other sdr i use i didn't care about pc performance because never had this issue.

Thanks


w-u-2-o wrote:I really don't know if a separate GPU will help. But it can't hurt!
cLicari
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Location: North Texas

Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby cLicari » Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:53 pm

I think the single most significant change one can make, if not already in place, is to add a dedicated Ethernet port and subnet to the rig. Regardless of which protocol one may be using, I saw significant improvements to both when the dedicated subnet was created.
Carl
NX5T
Carl Licari
NX5T
Anan 8000DLE, FW v2.0 2b, Thetis 2.8.11, 21k9
Windows 10, dedicated network subnet, Intel i7 8700K, 32GB, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, Samsung 40" 4K display
K9RX
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Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby K9RX » Fri Jul 26, 2019 1:12 pm

Carl,

Please forgive my ignorance - are you saying two things here? For "dedicated Ethernet port" do you mean an Ethernet card to a PC, not using the built in Ethernet?

And "port" ... do you mean not using DHCP vs static IP?

or

?

Gary
K9RX
ik7ytt
Posts: 48
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2019 11:48 am

Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby ik7ytt » Thu Aug 01, 2019 8:28 am

Updated the PC with this fantastic Intel NUC and all is perfect.

Pc is fast , can use chrome and other app all together without heavy usage of the cpu / pc

Again for my issue the second lan was not a problem. problem was the CPU / vga card / mb speed

@ Gary
yes you can use 1 Ethernet card or 2.

with 1 all data for local lan/internet/radio will be all together and if you have heavy traffic in each one your anan performance can be lower.
but also depends on the bandwidth and number of RX you use for the radio.

With 2 cards you have one dedicated with radio usually with fix ip. and 1 with the rest of the world. in this case depends on you if have it in dhcp or fix ip also.

you can find dedicated pages for this issue and how to configure it on this community and also on w1aex webpage
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w-u-2-o
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Re: New PC for Anan Suggestion

Postby w-u-2-o » Thu Aug 01, 2019 1:04 pm

Great news! :)

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