Best Mainboard for SageTV Server?

[jptaz]

Ok,

I am having some bandwidth and performance issues with my current setup as well as the fact that the PVR 500 will not work with my motherboard. Apparently VIA can not make a good PCI implementation and it is causing problems. I am thinking of getting a new CPU and mainboard.

Here is my current hardware and ideally I want all of it to stay:

2 x 512MB PC2700 DDR333 RAM

USB -> UPS / Mouse / Digital Camera / Streamzap / USB-UIRT
1394 -> DVD RW Drive
COM1 -> Actisys IR 200L

MB IDE 0 Master -> 40 GB Maxtor ATA133 7200 RPM (OS Drive)
Slave -> CD ROM
MB IDE 1 Master -> 120 GB Maxtor ATA133 7200 RPM (MP3/Video Library)

MB Promise IDE 0 Master -> 80 GB WD ATA100 7200 RPM (Recordings)
MB Promise IDE 1 Master -> 80 GB WD ATA100 7200 RPM (Recordings)

AGP -> ATI AIW 7500

4 X PCI PVR 250 (15)

SIL PCI ATA133 IDE 0 Master -> 80 GB Maxtor ATA133 7200 RPM (Recordings)
IDE 1 Master -> 300 GB Seagate ATA100 7200 RPM (Recordings)

If I could keep all the drives on seperate channels that would be great, but I am guessing that even if they are slaves they will be fine if the system/PCI bus is better and the CPU.

Why I think I need a new mainboard and CPU:
==================================
-I have 2 PC Clients (Kitchen and Living Room)
-I also have 2 MediaMVPs which are using Matts MVP client that run as two SageTVClients on the main server.
-I also want to be able to use the main Server for watching TV at times.
When SageTVClient sessions or MVP sessions start and stop live TV or recordings it causes hiccups in the other client playback and in some cases interruption in the recordings.

-I want to have my PVR 500 in the SageTV Server. (Crashes on my current PC)
-I want to move one of the PVR 250s to the living PC since I plan on using it with TVedia for watching TV and DVDs on my projector using my Xcard.

Options I am looking at right now
========================
GA-7N400 Pro2 (Revision 2) http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard...Rev%202.0).htm
And AMD XP 3000+(400Mhz)

INTEL BOXD865GBFL http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/bf/index.htm
and Pentium 4 2.4Ghz (800Mhz)

I am open to other options but I am hoping to keep the CPU + Mainboard under $250.

John

[mdmint]

While a new mobo may solve the hiccup problem it may also be you're over taxing the limitations of a single hard drive. Yes you have multiple hard drives, but do to Sage limitations will only use one at a time to record 'till full and if you're also playing back a recording from the same HD it may not be able to keep up. HDs notoriously the system IO bottleneck. RAID5 is not only for data redundancy, but IO throughput also greatly benefits from striping data for multi simultaneous HD access. Plus most decent RAID controllers have varying cache for reads and optionally writes. (both mine running 256MB cache)

I'd also consider getting the Server to gigabit nic. Clients at 100 ok but multiple streams out from Server could potentially bottleneck 100Mbs nic though HDs still more likely the culprit IME.

[mdmint]

To answer your mobo question my SageServer and HTPC Client both solid with AMD & Nvidia chipsets (Asus A7NX8-E Deluxe which also has onboard Gb nic.)

[jptaz]

Actually the Hiccup I see is because SageTV is pegged at 100% CPU at the time of high Client activty like closing out a session and initiating an intial connection. I am assuming that my PC is slower than others who do this as they do not see the high CPU usage or problems with garbled recordings.

This a partially a software issue as I have setup SageTV recording 4 shows and then I setup IO Meter to do some heavy duty testing on all of the drives including the drive(s) that SageTV is recording to. This also causes High CPU as well. After the test I reviewed the video and they were perfect. Then I started several Clients simultaneously while I was recording 4 shows and this too caused high CPU, but obviously less Drive access since this does not access the recording drives as I was doing with IOMeter. After that settled down I went back and reviewed the video and several of them show big sections of dropped or garbled frames. So disk access has nothing to do with this, but rather has more to do with my CPU / SageTV not being able to handle the SageTVClient activity while still handling writing the video to disk before the buffers are over flowed. While I Know SageTV could be made to handle these conditions better I have serious doubts that they will make it a priority since very few people have the problem. By the way I am setting the SageTV App to High Priority or else the recordings will just die all together in this kind of environment.


John

[jptaz]

What Hub/Switch do you use for connecting your PCs?

The board looks pretty good - The Giga-Byte board is a little more attractive from a feature set point...but I will have to see.

John

[mdmint]

I have Gb connections going to D-Link DGS-1005D 5 port Gb switch which connects to D-Link DI-624 wireless access point/router/4 port 10/100 switch combo. Stack nicely clean and neat. Performing solid since implementing last May.

[sleonard]

I was reading through your current specs and noticed that you have your CD drive as a slave to your c: drive. This slows you hard drive down to CD speeds. If I were you I'd set it up like this:

MB IDE 0 Master -> 40 GB Maxtor ATA133 7200 RPM (OS Drive)
MB IDE 0 Slave -> 120 GB Maxtor ATA133 7200 RPM (MP3/Video Library)

MB IDE 1 Master -> CD ROM

In short, never put a CD/DVD drive on the same controller as a hard drive.

[jptaz]

Actually the performance of the drive is no different whether the CD is a slave or not. I tested it with HD Tach with and with out and it does a burst of 55MB/s and 36MB/s Average Read. My Page File is on my fastest Drive which has a burst of 121MB/s and 49MB/s Average Read.

John

[jptaz]

Just a follow up:

Found this in relation to the CD and Hard Drive sharing a channel impacting performance.

http://www.sage.org/mailarchive/sage.../msg00014.html

Since I rarely if ever use the CD ROM Drive and the fact that it is a DMA capable drive I agree with the assessment here that the performance is minimal as compared to the benefit of have two drives that are accessed all the time will have the full bus instead of sharing it with the other device. In the case where I am reading from the CD ROM drive I agree that the speed of acces to the drive will be cut down to the CD ROM Speed but again that is rare.

Honestly when I am done setting up my new sysem I may just unplug the CD ROM drive since I have the external DVD burner for the times I need to use a CD and it is really only ineeded to install the OS since I don't think mainboards / OS support booting CD from Firewire.

John

[jptaz]

So Any one else have opions on which way to go?

AMD XP / nForce 2 400 Ultra or Intel P4 / Intel 865?

John

[Opus4]

I bought this GIGABYTE GA-8IPE1000PRO-G Motherboard from Newegg several months ago & have had no problems with it so far. I have a 250 inside & a PVR-USB2 + Plextor on USB2 ports. There are some other cards connected, including an Xcard (see my profile), but I have not used a 150 or 500.

- Andy

[jsturtevant]

you may want to put your cd or dvd in a usb 2.0 case as most mb now allow you to boot off a usb cd.

[SHS]

Well this my little server
Intel P4 1.6GHz
Intel D845WN
(2) PC133 256MB
(3) Maxtor 250GB
LiteON LTN242 CDrom
WinTV-PVR 500
Actisys IR 200L
HP (D5259A) M70 17" Monitor
MS Optical USB Mouse
REALtek 8139 NIC

[AJ Bertelson]

Can't go wrong with nforce2 boards

I am running a EPOX 8rda but I would suggest this mainboard though http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...150-045&depa=0

I currently use it in my workstation and it has been rock solid and its under 60 bucks

[stanger89]

FWIW, soon to be server will be running an NF7-S2G, and I'm planning a new PC build (yet to see if it's my "workstation" or HTPC), with an NF8 or Chaintek VNF4. Any thoughts? I'm having trouble deciding between NF3 with AGP/PCI ro NF4 with PCIe

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by stanger89

FWIW, soon to be server will be running an NF7-S2G, and I'm planning a new PC build (yet to see if it's my "workstation" or HTPC), with an NF8 or Chaintek VNF4. Any thoughts? I'm having trouble deciding between NF3 with AGP/PCI ro NF4 with PCIe

If you hadn't recently purchased a new AGP vid I'd say go for the faster PCIe vid bus. PCIe Nvidia cards seem to run less than their AGP model counterpart too. Then again, you may be buying another vid anyway so... (Always good to have someone else be the guinea pig )

[stanger89]

I think that's a good chunk of the dilema, AGP with a Radeon 9500 (that I have) or PCIe with a Geforce 6600

I'd prefer the 6600 of course

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I think that's a good chunk of the dilema, AGP with a Radeon 9500 (that I have) or PCIe with a Geforce 6600

I'd prefer the 6600 of course

If you're going to dedicate a SageServer that "serves" only not used for playback it (obviously) doesn't need vid horsepower. I just used an old ATI Rage 128 Pro 32M I had laying around. Works fine. Just use your Radeon 9500, or sell it on eBay and buy a cheapo $15 card for the Server! Dedicated HTPC wise aren't you planning on using your new GF 9800, or will you keep that in your workstation? If the later then definitely get a PCIe for new GF 6600 in dedicated HTPC. Sounds good to me anyway.

[stanger89]

I see nobody can keep track of my stuff

The 6800 is in my HTPC right now, the 9500 is in my other/workstation PC. I've got a few video cards laying around Riva 128 (times 2), Riva TNT2 Ultra, Geforce2 MX, Geforce4 MX, I think I've got a PCI Matrox Mystique too. So logic dictates that I just throw something (or nothing) in the server and continue using the 9500 in my workstation.

But I want a 6600 I want to play with one. I've pondered making my new stuff (Athlon 64 stuff) into my new HTPC, in which case a 6600 is very attractive.

However, and I think this will be the deciding factor, I've got a WD Raptor for my workstation boot drive (not quiet) and the board in my HTPC doesn't have SATA, so logic will probably win out and my current P4+6800 SATA-less stuff will stay the HTPC and the new stuff will become my workstation, probably an NF8 and my 9500.

It's just too much fun planning this stuff

[stanger89]

While we're on the server topic, anybody running the Sage service on Windows Server 2003?