Xeon versus Pentium based servers

[Petrucci]

I am in the process of setting up my first SageTV(SageMC) server and I'm trying to decide what platform to build the server on. The server that I am running sage is basically just sending large amounts of data to HD-200 extenders and not doing anything else audio/video related. So my thought is that it would make more since to build it on a Xeon based platform that is designed specifically for this type of operation. I should also add that I am running this on Windows Home Server. Here are my questions and/or comments ---

-Does SageTV run on any Windows Home Server environment or does it require a pentium processor?

-Does SageTV support 64bit Processing?

-Does SageTV support multiple cores?

-Has anyone else done this??

Thanks in advance,
Eric

[Skirge01]

The requirements are here.

But...

SageTV requires a Windows, MAC, or Linux OS, so if you can get your processor to run one of them, the correct version of Sage will also run.

SageTV is a 32 bit application.

I did a very quick search on the forums for "multi-threaded" and came up with these results.

I'm running WHS on a quad core Xeon on a dual processor mobo without any issues.

[stanger89]

I think you're drasticly overestimating the system requirements of Sage. I run extenders from my Athlon XP 1800 server.

[Petrucci]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I think you're drasticly overestimating the system requirements of Sage. I run extenders from my Athlon XP 1800 server.

Its good to hear that you can run it on that old of a platform. I work in the networking field and I know that processor power can be the first bottleneck for a pc based Fast-Ethernet interface. I dont know how big the data streams are sending 1080p data to three extender devices at once but overkill never hurt anybody has it?

[wayner]

Depends where your 1080p stream are coming from. I would think that the most bandwidth intensive content is 1080i ATSC streams that can be up to 19Mbps. The only 1080p content would come from BluRay rips that would likley be using more efficient codecs so the bitrate may be lower. So even three of these shouldn't be that stressful, especially if you have 1Gbps ethernet.

I would also bet that your hard drive(s) would be the bottleneck before your CPU.

The thing that does require more CPU is transcoding or Commercial detection, particularly for H.264 files.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Petrucci

Its good to hear that you can run it on that old of a platform. I work in the networking field and I know that processor power can be the first bottleneck for a pc based Fast-Ethernet interface. I dont know how big the data streams are sending 1080p data to three extender devices at once...

50Mbps tops per stream basically. Though that's by far worst case, more likely you're in the 10-20Mbps category for HD. Blu-ray is pretty much the only thing that goes over 20Mbps.

but overkill never hurt anybody has it?

I'm all for overkill

Where you're really going to run into issues first, is disk throughput, that's where you should focus your attention. There's no reason to pay the Xeon tax, they won't gain you anything for Sage vs the comparable Core2 Core i7.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by wayner

The only 1080p content would come from BluRay rips that would likley be using more efficient codecs so the bitrate may be lower.

Blu-ray is actually higher, usually. Reason being BD isn't bandwidth or storage limited (compared to broadcast) and you buy BD for quality, so the bitrate is cranked because there's room.

[SWKerr]

I run my WHS box on an 780G motherboard with a 45w AMD 2.1 ghz processor. I have two HD-PVRs and a HDHR and can record three shows while watching on two seperate client PCs. That is all the power you really need unless you plan to use placeshifter. You can build one of these really cheap. I would go with AMD because your upgrade path will be better right now but a low end Intel will work fine. Look for something with at least 6 SATA connections. If you need more you can always buy another card. Spend any money you save on extra disk drives. You can never have enough disk space.

I just does not make sense to spend cash on a machine that will sit in a closet somewhere doing nothing 95% of the time.

[Skirge01]

These guys are definitely correct. WHS and Sage, by themselves, do not require a very powerful computer. However, I live by the mantra "do it once, do it right" and that's how I built my server. It wasn't until about 6 months into it that those 4 cores were being used more than 10%. That's when I started using FlexRAID. About 3 months later, I started using Comskip. Now, even my 4 cores aren't enough to keep up, so I have the other computers in the house also doing Comskip and am seriously considering adding a second quad core CPU to the server. With 7 cores running Comskip, I can finally catch up to the amount of recordings I do (7TB on the WHS box).

[SWKerr]

I run comskip on the hd-pvr files and they take awhile to run but they are always ready by the next morning. This on a slow X2 cpu. How many hours of TV are you recording? Really, except for the news which I may start while ist recording, I have never had a show that was not ready when I watch it. Even the catch up when the h.264 version of comskip first came out only took a few days.

[valnar]

Originally Posted by Petrucci

Does SageTV run on any Windows Home Server environment or does it require a pentium processor?

-Does SageTV support 64bit Processing?

-Does SageTV support multiple cores?

-Has anyone else done this??

I'll give you my recommendation

1) Any modern Core2Duo CPU will work. You could buy a quad, but it generally would be wasted unless you're doing other non-Sage things with your server. (Might also take more electricity for no reason? Not sure if the latest quads shut down cores that are unused)

2) Your hard drive subsystem and NIC are more important than the processor. Get a $35 Intel NIC with a good switch, and you'll never come back to these forums with weird connectivity problems.

3) Buy 2 - 4GB of RAM and run a 32-bit Windows. I like Win2003 Server. WHS and XP are good too. Vista and Win7 can work, but may require more tweaking. No need for 64-bit Windows, and you'd limit yourself to certain hardware.

There are people who will retort and say 64bit Windows is fine, Win7 is fine, Realtek NIC's are fine, crappy Belkin switches are fine, etc. Well, for some they are, for others they are not. Take my advice and it'll work 100% of the time.

Oh yah, Intel CPU's and chipsets rule. If you're building from scratch, no need to go with AMD. (Putting flamesuit on).

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I run comskip on the hd-pvr files and they take awhile to run but they are always ready by the next morning. This on a slow X2 cpu. How many hours of TV are you recording? Really, except for the news which I may start while ist recording, I have never had a show that was not ready when I watch it. Even the catch up when the h.264 version of comskip first came out only took a few days.

I have Intelligent Recording enabled, so my two HD-PVRs are recording pretty regularly. I also have 3 OTA tuners. Right this second, I have 796 favorites (329 episodes from the various Law & Order shows alone) and 117 suggestions recorded. In the next 21 hours, I have 43 more shows scheduled to record, only 3 of which are favorites.

Also, I do have them set up to only Comskip shows which have commercials, prioritized by favorites, then suggestions, so it's not that I'm doing unnecessary processing.

I'm an extreme case, but proof that "overkill" is in the eye of the beholder.

[blade]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I have Intelligent Recording enabled, so my two HD-PVRs are recording pretty regularly. I also have 3 OTA tuners. Right this second, I have 796 favorites (329 episodes from the various Law & Order shows alone) and 117 suggestions recorded. In the next 21 hours, I have 43 more shows scheduled to record, only 3 of which are favorites.

Also, I do have them set up to only Comskip shows which have commercials, prioritized by favorites, then suggestions, so it's not that I'm doing unnecessary processing.

I'm an extreme case, but proof that "overkill" is in the eye of the beholder.

Wow and I thought I watched a lot of TV.

I don't have a HD-PVR so I don't know what impact it would have on my server, but I'm surprised it takes so much to process your shows. I have an Opteron 175 running at 2.8 ghz so it's a bit faster than a 185. It can process a 1 hr 720p show in under 8 minutes and does 1080i even quicker.

I process my shows as they record so I don't need to blaze through them, but I've still set skip_b_frames=2 just to prevent any unnecessary work on the server. I have Dirmon2 scan the directories every 10 minutes and the play nice parameter so that it takes 45 minutes to process a 1 hr 720p show. With these settings I can process 4 QAM streams and 2 analog as they record and processing is complete on all 6 around 11 seconds after the recordings end. So if I recorded 24 hours a day that would be 96 HD shows and 48 SD per day my server would process without even breaking a sweat. I know HD-PVR recordings are a lot more taxing, but my server is pretty slow compared to what many people are running and I thought some people were doing 1 hr shows from the HD-PVR in less than 1 hr. If so it's hard for me to grasp how people would need that many cores to keep up with their recordings. I've been putting off getting a HD-PVR because I don't have time to fool around with setting it up, but I'm sure when I do it'll likely make me want to upgrade my server.

My goal for commercial detection is to process shows on all of my tuners in real time while keeping as much power free for other tasks as possible.

[Skirge01]

My quad core is only a very low power, 2.3GHz Xeon (Harpertown core). So, it's quite a bit slower than your Opteron. My goal was building a quiet and cool server, so I didn't go overboard on the processing power. Then, since I had so many shows recorded prior to implementing comskip, I had a LOT of catching up to do. At this point, I can keep up with just the Xeon (max of 3 threads), so long as Comskip doesn't hang.