Which for server..........?

[Zippster]

Going to try and not be long winded as I know most do want to read novels.

I bought a new MC Case and put my old gaming system in it as I upgraded, so into my MC PC went my AMD 64 3200 and X800XT plus ATI HD wonder. DL the SageTV trial and love it, but, dam MC cases just dont seem to cool and cpu is running hot causing me issues.

With this I decided that I will just breakdown and buy the HD Media Extender for my big screen and use all the extra parts I have to put a dedicated server up for Sage. Heres the question part.

Should I use:

A) AMD 64 3200

or

B) Dual ( YES dual proc, not dual core ) 246 Opteron Sledgehammers ( 2.0GHZ )

for my server ONLY.

I would be using my ATI HD Wonder for HD tuning in it.

I hate to buy more parts if I dont have to.

Thanks

[mayamaniac]

which ever is faster and more stable. I hope you have nForce boards and not VIA chipsets. If you plan to add lots of drives, consider getting a server case or bigger case for cooling purposes.

The HD Extender is a smart choice.

[Zippster]

Thanks, actually I guess I should have posted the boards with them.

The 3200 is on an asus K8V SE DELUXE so VIA there.

The dual opterons are on a regular TYAN server board with AMD chipset.

The optys are in a full size server case with drive cages.

3200 runs 2.2 GHz and Optys are 2 GHz x 2 not sure if Sage will utilize the hyperthreading well though.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Zippster

Thanks, actually I guess I should have posted the boards with them.

The 3200 is on an asus K8V SE DELUXE so VIA there.

The dual opterons are on a regular TYAN server board with AMD chipset.

The optys are in a full size server case with drive cages.

3200 runs 2.2 GHz and Optys are 2 GHz x 2 not sure if Sage will utilize the hyperthreading well though.

Sage is multi-threaded for the most part. The Sage Transcoder unfortunately is not, but the actual Sage application is. Funny part about that, is that the actual Sage Service/Application really isn't all that processor intensive (from a server standpoint), but the Transcoder is very processor intensive (kind of backward if you ask me).

Also, I used an MSI K8T800 (Via chipset) for a long time as a Sage server with 2 - dual tuner tuner cards on the PCI bus along with a Fusion5Lite OTA HDTV tuner (5 tuners total) with no problems. I will say the via chipsets prior to the Athlon64 line ups had many problems when several devices were on the PCI bus (my old KT133 chipset was a stinker for that), but I had no problems with my K8T800.

Just my .02 worth.

[stanger89]

I'd got with the Opterons just for the motherboard. But beyond that, while as noted Sage transcoder isn't multithreaded, it's still advantageous to have multiple processors/cores so that if you do do processor intensive activities (like the transcoder) on one thread, it won't affect other processing.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by Zippster

Thanks, actually I guess I should have posted the boards with them.

The 3200 is on an asus K8V SE DELUXE so VIA there.

The dual opterons are on a regular TYAN server board with AMD chipset.

The optys are in a full size server case with drive cages.

3200 runs 2.2 GHz and Optys are 2 GHz x 2 not sure if Sage will utilize the hyperthreading well though.

I had that Asus K8V SE DELUXE board, and it is very unstable for server. Go with the AMD opteron machine.

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Also, I used an MSI K8T800 (Via chipset) for a long time as a Sage server with 2 - dual tuner tuner cards on the PCI bus along with a Fusion5Lite OTA HDTV tuner (5 tuners total) with no problems. I will say the via chipsets prior to the Athlon64 line ups had many problems when several devices were on the PCI bus (my old KT133 chipset was a stinker for that), but I had no problems with my K8T800.

Just my .02 worth.

Not all VIA chipsets are bad, I dare say most are not. It's just that a larger percentage of them have been reported problematic compare to intel or nVidia chipsets.

[Zippster]

Thanks guys, I started to lean towards the optys as I read more, would be nice though if as Paul stated, the transcoder would actually utilize hyperthreading also.

HD Media Extender is ordered, now to start prepping the opty for service.

[Zippster]

Another quick question I'll throw at you guys.

I was figuring on putting the OS and programs including sage on an 80gb IDE drive ( newer one ) and then using the 2 new 500 gb Sata II drives for video storage, will this be fine and if so, should I run the 2 500's as individuals or raid? I did read and am aware of the 64kb cluster formatting.

Thanks

[stanger89]

That's a great setup. As for RAID, there's really no point, in fact it could be argued that Sage's "load balancing" (writing to the drive with the most free space) will result in the load being shared better with two drives than one volume.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by stanger89

That's a great setup. As for RAID, there's really no point, in fact it could be argued that Sage's "load balancing" (writing to the drive with the most free space) will result in the load being shared better with two drives than one volume.

I'm with Stanger....use seperate drives. Why?

1. Raid 0 (okay not a true raid) - You do not need the thoroughput of Raid 0 for recordings and if one goes down you lose everything.
2. Raid 1 - Now you have just decreased your storage to half, and what are you protecting? Some TV shows that you will watch once and never view again and probably are sitting on the hard drive because you never deleted them? (I do it all the time).

Edit: You can see by my signature, I have about the same setup you are describing. I have a 100GB (I know its a weird size, came with an old Compaq Desktop) SATA hard drive for OS / Sage/ etc. and then I have 2 - 320GB SATA drives for video recordings. I never use it all other than during the olympics....

[Zippster]

Ok, as I read even more, I am aware of the 64K clusters, but with my 2x500 drives just for storage, is there an advantage to 1 for movies and 1 for TV as I see people doing? Currently this server will only be servicing 1 HD100.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Zippster

Ok, as I read even more, I am aware of the 64K clusters, but with my 2x500 drives just for storage, is there an advantage to 1 for movies and 1 for TV as I see people doing? Currently this server will only be servicing 1 HD100.

I personally would use one for recordings and 1 for movies if you are planning to store movies to your Sage Server. My reasoning is that I usually rip my movies on my main pc (not my Sage Server) and then copy them to my server (I actually have a seperate file server for Movie Storage). If Sage were to be recording a show to a drive that you then copy the movie to, you could end up with a botched recording due to the hard drive doing too much. This is hypothetical, but possible. I personally would seperate them out just to be safe.

[Zippster]

Thats exactly what I would be doing also Paul, so great idea and explanation.

Thanks