Sounds like a neat setup... anybody else have thoughts/experiences?
-Galen
On May 7, 2005, at 6:19 PM, Devan Lippman wrote:
I run dual CPUs on my backend and I think if you've got the cash its an awesome way to do things. I have two P3 Tualatin 1.3GHz CPUs and capture HDTV off my STB using firewire with no problem while running transcoding and commercial flagging and streaming to the frontend. I like how it makes it so a really busy thread can get its own CPU and the other threads are happy running on the other CPU.
Devan
On 5/7/05, Galen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Been checking on the hardware... please correct me if I'm wrong here!
The potentially cost-viable CPU options with a few sample prices
attached:
1) AMD Athlon MP (2800 2.13 GHz = USD ~197, can't find anything faster)
2) AMD Opteron (242 1.6 GHz = USD ~158, 244 1.8 GHz = USD ~203)
3) Intel Xenon (2.8 GHz = USD ~220, 2.66 GHz = USD ~199)
(did I miss any cost-viable options?)
For each of these CPUs, what would the comfortable minimum be for HDTV playback only? (I will have an GeForce card, but I believe that I will lose XvMC acceleration if I want to do any fancy deinerlacing tricks. Is this correct?) I am trying to assess the price difference and practicality of a dual-CPU setup. Also, what anybody know sort of heat production are we talking about per-CPU here?
Does MythTV compile properly for 64-bit and actually offer any practical performance gains? (Or am I going to completely regret that I even *thought* of trying 64-bit code... I am thinking that may be a "yes" for the time being...)
-Galen
On May 7, 2005, at 3:03 PM, Galen wrote:
I'm one of those lurkers... I'm not yet in possession of my own MythTV box, but I'm rather familiar with *nix and am working on plans (and finances) for an awesome HDTV MythTV box. When I get it done, it will be killer. (I am, however, somewhat of a newbie when it comes to x86 hardware. I've lived in RISC land too long...)
I've been looking into the specifications for a MythTV system, and it occurred to me, it seems like an awesome application for a dual- CPU/core setup. HDTV decoding is pretty high-end in terms of system demands, so purchasing much more CPU than required for decent HDTV playback (~A64 3200, P4 3 GHz) gets really expensive, really fast, and it's simply impossible to purchase twice the CPU required for HDTV playback w/decent de-interlacing and various other functions. More CPU means you can do more post-processing, commercial flagging, maybe even background transcoding (with the proper nice values, of course).
It seems like a dual-CPU system would be an excellent solution to this problem. Size the CPUs such that one CPU is able to comfortably handle the single largest realtime function (HDTV decoding), and then the other CPU is free so you can do some *awesome* de-interlacing, commercial flagging, etc without ever impacting the HDTV playback. The same effect would happen with dual core CPUs, but they are only getting started. Dual CPUs are here, today. I've done enough work with dual-CPU systems to realize that while they don't offer "double" the performance for traditional mono-threaded applications, for some multi-threaded applications that rely on realtime response (i.e. video playback), they're better than a CPU that's twice as fast.
Does this make sense? I'm curious if anybody has tried this, and with what CPU/motherboard? Any thoughts as to some optimal hardware configurations (CPU speed/type/mobo)? What would my practical options for de-interlacing be with a setup like this?
-Galen
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