Best way to configure a graphics card (Quadro P400 v2)

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BIT Beta Team
Jan 5, 2017
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I recently added a Quadro P400 v2 graphics card to my 15-10400 system, and I am struggling over how to set this up. I primarily purchased it to play around with DeepStack and this machine is also my PLEX server and I thought it may help out with that.

So normally when I build a computer, I set the BIOS to use the PCIE graphics card and never think about it again. But with Blue Iris, it looks like the p400 is not much use in video decoding for Blue Iris

So with dedicated graphics selected in the BIOS, task manager shows one GPU - the Quadro P400
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But with onboard graphics selected in the BIOS - Task Manager shows two GPU's
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Should I run with Dedicated Graphics (PCIE) or not? And should I keep Blue Iris hardware decode set to Intel +VPP? Suggestions?

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Many of us have found with recent BI updates that hardware acceleration is problematic, and with substreams an option now, most have seen that the CPU% needed to offload the video to the GPU is larger than the CPU% savings realized by offloading to the GPU. Hardware acceleration doesn't even show as a suggested optimization anymore in the wiki.

My suggestion is to not use hardware acceleration and simply use the GPU for Deepstack. You will see a benefit there.
 
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Shut off hardware decode in BI. If anything, especially with sub streams and a modern processor which you have, it introduces more overhead to the CPU rather than saving load on the CPU. I'd leave video on the Intel processor and just use the NVidia for DeepStack. Remember you need to shut off hardware acceleration both globally and in each camera as well.
 
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Is there any advantage of just setting the BIOS to onboard and having the two GPU's show in Windows instead of just the p400?

So in Blue Iris I will stick with Intel +VPP either way
 
Just remember if your system gets wonky, turn off hardware acceleration as a first step. I use zero HA and my CPU went down. Even offloading to onboard Intel can take more CPU than the savings...
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Remember you need to shut off hardware acceleration both globally and in each camera as well.
Click to expand...
This is only if you didn't follow the wiki advice: which (used to?? - may now be revised to advise against HA altogether?) say do set it once in the main BI config/settings dialog to Intel or Intel+VPP, then let the cameras inherit this setting by using "Default" on the individual camera pages.

Either way, I still run Intel+VPP HA and don't see any problems from using that setup , and in fact get slightly lower overall power consumption that way compared to running with no hardware acceleration. In fact, I'm curious as to what issues others are seeing by running with HA enabled.
 
jrbeddow said:
This is only if you didn't follow the wiki advice: which (used to?? - may now be revised to advise against HA altogether?) say do set it once in the main BI config/settings dialog to Intel or Intel+VPP, then let the cameras inherit this setting by using "Default" on the individual camera pages.

Either way, I still run Intel+VPP HA and don't see any problems from using that setup , and in fact get slightly lower overall power consumption that way compared to running with no hardware acceleration. In fact, I'm curious as to what issues others are seeing by running with HA enabled.
Click to expand...

The wiki was revised as hardware acceleration caused some systems to become unstable once DeepStack was introduced (maybe just a coincidence or maybe a startup timing issue) - either green screen, no audio, delayed video, choppy video, RAM shooting up and crashing, BI crashing immediately at open, etc. Lot's of threads here that were started with a problem and either thru input here or from BI when the person reached out to them suggested turning HA off.

I personally had no issues with HA either, but for kicks I tried turning it off and my CPU went down a few %.
 
That is how I currently have it set up -> Intel+VPP in global settings, and the I just checked all my cams and made sure they were set to default. But, I have not made the switch to DeepStack GPU yet, still running the CPU version. (baby steps)
 
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The bottom line is still that HA does not "buy" anything significant in terms of significant CPU utilization savings and may, actually increase CPU utilization. I would leave the both visible in Windows so DS know they are there. Nothing lost there by doing so.
 
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Interesting, in my case the CPU utilization was virtually the same either way (it is very low to begin with, with no noticeable trend with HA on or off). The only notable change (and still very small) was a slighty lower overall power draw from the wall with HA turned on, so I left it that way. No stability issues here, even with the much maligned (Jan. or Feb.?) 2022 Deepstack version, running in CPU only mode. YMMV, right?
 
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Did some impromptu testing.

Using (4) cams displayed in the Blue Iris Console, I used the timeline to play back the same clips at 128x speed for 5minutes. (same setup, same video clip, etc) Blue Iris was set to use Intel+VPP in global settings and no changes were made to anything between the two tests

First test, is on the left with the P400 video card installed in the BIOS using PCIE with one GPU showing in task manager.

The second test on the right using motherboard video in the BIOS and two GPU's showing in task manager.

To me, it looks like at this point, the test on the left, (single GPU) is using a little less CPU and the CPU temps are also a little lower. It certainly doesn't show the recording capability, but it's the only thing I could think of at the time

I will have to do it again for a longer period of time to check the results

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A little longer test. 30 minutes for each test, with (5) cams showing in the console and playing from the timeline (2 days ago)

The graphs read from left to right. Setting the BIOS to use PCIE graphics looks like the CPU usage is a little lower and CPU temps are a little cooler than setting onboard graphics in the BIOS, but the GPU is running hotter since it is picking up more of the load.

I think I will stick with PCIE for now and try to do a longer test (24 hours or more) some other time

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Yeah, at 18 camera's, When i finally relented and upgraded from Amcrest's DVD of Blue Iris V5, to 5.4.7.11, I had to turn off HA.
But before I got to the HA issue, i had to fix the .jpg capture menu.
In the upgrade process, the installer took my "on" setting in the record tab ( jpegs) from Ver 5, and computed that in the new version(5.4.7.11) as " continous" jpegs.
Clown show....I thought saving jpegs was a good thing. ( which I have stopped doing) but I was at 100%.... and so when I turned that off,
It would run, but it was running at 67%-77% with high Ram usage as I recall.
then wittaj told me to turn off HA. cam by cam until things calmed down.
Now I have it off Globally.
and my CPU's normal fluctuation is from 10% to 23% based on how busy it is with motion events.
 
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Interesting. the kB/s seems to be varying as well?
Maybe its using a different method to process data. You think it's struggling to keep up or not optimized?
 
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Looks to me like the lower CPU and temps in your experiment is resulting in throttling of something.

For the minimum differences, I would run with the one that give me a KEY of 1.00 or else you may miss some motion triggers.

Now turn HA off and see what happens?
 
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Flintstone61 said:
Interesting. the kB/s seems to be varying as well?
Maybe its using a different method to process data. You think it's struggling to keep up or not optimized?
Click to expand...
The kB/s always seem to vary a little bit. Overall CPU usage on this system has always been pretty good. i5-10400, 15 cams, around 118 MP/s. CPU is usually less than 20% with occasional spikes when their is activity. Spikes never last long though

wittaj said:
For the minimum differences, I would run with the one that give me a KEY of 1.00 or else you may miss some motion triggers.
Click to expand...

That is what I though to - that the 1.00 KEY is more important, so for now I am back to onboard graphics in BIOS which shows the two GPU's in Windows

I changed HA in Blue Iris with both GPU's showing - no difference noted so far. I will try to get the computer rebooted and the bios changed to see if it makes a difference
 
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