HW decoding and supported CPUs

[hbee]

I've got a 6 camera setup running on an old Dell PowerEdge 2950 with 2x Xeon L5335 CPUs, totalling in 8x 2GHz cores. Unfortunate this path seems not to be working as good as I hoped and now it appears there are two options, 1) upgrade to 3GHz CPUs or 2) go with the HW decoding.

Unfortunately I've not found out for sure what CPUs are supported for this HW decoding. Could someone shed light on what is the feature I need to look in the CPU in order to have fully working HW decoding?

 

[fenderman]

I've got a 6 camera setup running on an old Dell PowerEdge 2950 with 2x Xeon L5335 CPUs, totalling in 8x 2GHz cores. Unfortunate this path seems not to be working as good as I hoped and now it appears there are two options, 1) upgrade to 3GHz CPUs or 2) go with the HW decoding.

Unfortunately I've not found out for sure what CPUs are supported for this HW decoding. Could someone shed light on what is the feature I need to look in the CPU in order to have fully working HW decoding?

Welcome to the forum. Dont waste time upgrading this extreme power hog server. Buy a business class hp/dell with an i5-4590 for $300 and call it a day. You need a cpu that supports intel HD with quicksync.

 

[bp2008]

Google search for a CPU model number and one of the first hits should be intel's site. Look for this:

For example, search "i5-4590" and you find http://ark.intel.com/products/80815/Intel-Core-i5-4590-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_70-GHz
And you see that Quick Sync Video is a feature.

Note that some older CPUs with Quick Sync may only support an older version of Quick Sync which Blue Iris may not support, or may Blue Iris lose support for it in the future. Like if Blue Iris eventually updates its Intel Media SDK to support h265 encoding and decoding, a generation of older CPUs may lose hardware acceleration compatibility where it had worked in the past.

 

[hbee]

Thanks for the replies. I was aware of the Intel ARK but I was mainly wondering if I could go with Sandy Bridge, for example, as it is the first architecture supporting Quick Sync. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video does mention some differences between the architectures but I've not been able to find out what would be the requirements for Blue Iris or how do these differences affect decoding in general.

bp2008 mentioned the older CPUs but I wonder if there would be any additional details regarding this?

Also, I'm somewhat limited in used hardware options as I'm located in Northern Europe and this is partly the reason I'm trying to find out specifics for what architecture CPU's I should be searching for.

 

[bp2008]

I think i7-2xxx worked but i5-2xxx and smaller did not - but this is coming from my memory of posts from other people.

 

[TonyR]

Here's a link to Intel CPUs that support Quick Sync:
http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced?QuickSyncVideo=true&MarketSegment=DT

 

[hbee]

Hi,

Ok so from what I've found from here and from the official Blueiris support, I think best way would be to upgrade my current desktop PC to a newer one and re-purpose the current i5 3570K Ivy Bridge as a Blueiris machine. Unfortunately it appears Quick Sync cannot be exposed to Blueiris if it is running on VMWare so I must still keep the current Dell PE 2950 machine.

 

[fenderman]

Hi,

Ok so from what I've found from here and from the official Blueiris support, I think best way would be to upgrade my current desktop PC to a newer one and re-purpose the current i5 3570K Ivy Bridge as a Blueiris machine. Unfortunately it appears Quick Sync cannot be exposed to Blueiris if it is running on VMWare so I must still keep the current Dell PE 2950 machine.

Have you put the server on a power meter to determine the power draw? You may save money upgrading to an efficient machine.

 

[bp2008]

Hi,

Ok so from what I've found from here and from the official Blueiris support, I think best way would be to upgrade my current desktop PC to a newer one and re-purpose the current i5 3570K Ivy Bridge as a Blueiris machine.

That should make a fairly good Blue Iris machine.

Unfortunately it appears Quick Sync cannot be exposed to Blueiris if it is running on VMWare so I must still keep the current Dell PE 2950 machine.

Correct. I don't think any virtual machine can access Quick Sync.

 

[hbee]

The current setup, PowerEdge 2950, 4G modem and 8 port PoE switch (i.e. the cameras) draws for approximately 180 watts of power under 50% load. From this ~20 watts goes to PoE so ~150 watts would be a good number for what the PowerEdge draws. Undoubtedly Ivy Bridge would be more power efficient but the main cause for an upgrade would be a possibility of utilizing more (and higher resolution) cameras as I'm currently running 2x 720p, 2x 1080p and 2x 4M Dahuas @ 1080p.

 

[fenderman]

The current setup, PowerEdge 2950, 4G modem and 8 port PoE switch (i.e. the cameras) draws for approximately 180 watts of power under 50% load. From this ~20 watts goes to PoE so ~150 watts would be a good number for what the PowerEdge draws. Undoubtedly Ivy Bridge would be more power efficient but the main cause for an upgrade would be a possibility of utilizing more (and higher resolution) cameras as I'm currently running 2x 720p, 2x 1080p and 2x 4M Dahuas @ 1080p.

Not sure how much you pay for electricity, however, in the northeast where out rates are about 20c a kwh, the difference between using your machine at 150w and a modern i5 haswell at 35-50w under the same load is about 200 dollars a year...the machine will pay for itself in 18months....its silly to subsidize the electric company. ..plus you can sell that old server for a few dollars.

 

[eddiequeue]

The current setup, PowerEdge 2950, 4G modem and 8 port PoE switch (i.e. the cameras) draws for approximately 180 watts of power under 50% load. From this ~20 watts goes to PoE so ~150 watts would be a good number for what the PowerEdge draws. Undoubtedly Ivy Bridge would be more power efficient but the main cause for an upgrade would be a possibility of utilizing more (and higher resolution) cameras as I'm currently running 2x 720p, 2x 1080p and 2x 4M Dahuas @ 1080p.

I'm currently running a PowerEdge 1950 with dual 3.0Ghz CPUs and it is drawing 240w-280w with an average 15% CPU utilization, not sure how you could be getting that much lower power usage at 50% utilization, maybe you have some more efficient CPUs. That power usage is just my PowerEdge, not counting the POE switch. Just wanted to mention this in case you want to try a different method of measurement. My machine is on a UPS which has a real time readout and I then have a plug-in power meter in front of that and they both read the same +/- 5w.

 

[fenderman]

I'm currently running a PowerEdge 1950 with dual 3.0Ghz CPUs and it is drawing 240w-280w with an average 15% CPU utilization, not sure how you could be getting that much lower power usage at 50% utilization, maybe you have some more efficient CPUs. That power usage is just my PowerEdge, not counting the POE switch. Just wanted to mention this in case you want to try a different method of measurement. My machine is on a UPS which has a real time readout and I then have a plug-in power meter in front of that and they both read the same +/- 5w.

wow...that is terrible. How much do you pay for electricity? Unless its free or close to it, you are better off replacing the system.

 

[eddiequeue]

wow...that is terrible. How much do you pay for electricity? Unless its free or close to it, you are better off replacing the system.

I've run the numbers, the system was a free decommission from work that I was able to get for free. I pay $0.12/kwh after I include all fees and admin charges so I am out for about $21/mo for this system. What would an i5-4950 typically draw? I am assuming I would still be looking at an 24mo+ pay off on dropping $500 on a new system (I'm in Canada so $1USD = ~$1.35CAD). Using that much power kills me for sure.

 

[hbee]

My setup is also running behind UPS. Thus, I would consider the readout valid. However, now when I think about it the 180W might have been the output load and the actual input load would be ~210W considering the worst case efficiency of 86%... The CPUs are L5335 which are specced for 50W TDP. My setup is also free from work, except for the 20 or 30 USD I spent on the CPUs.

Our electricity prices are on the range of $0,15/kWh so it is not free to run the machine. The PowerEdge however provides some nice features compared to a puny desktop machine. Redundancies (dual PSU, ECC, actually reliable RAID) and remote management are quite appreciated when the machine is located some 300 kilometers away from my current location.

 

[eddiequeue]

My setup is also running behind UPS. Thus, I would consider the readout valid. However, now when I think about it the 180W might have been the output load and the actual input load would be ~210W considering the worst case efficiency of 86%... The CPUs are L5335 which are specced for 50W TDP. My setup is also free from work, except for the 20 or 30 USD I spent on the CPUs.

Our electricity prices are on the range of $0,15/kWh so it is not free to run the machine. The PowerEdge however provides some nice features compared to a puny desktop machine. Redundancies (dual PSU, ECC, actually reliable RAID) and remote management are quite appreciated when the machine is located some 300 kilometers away from my current location.

It does look like your quad-core CPUs are rated more efficient than my Dual core Xeons. Agreed - those server grade features are nice and hard to give up once you get used to them.

 

[fenderman]

Our electricity prices are on the range of $0,15/kWh so it is not free to run the machine. The PowerEdge however provides some nice features compared to a puny desktop machine. Redundancies (dual PSU, ECC, actually reliable RAID) and remote management are quite appreciated when the machine is located some 300 kilometers away from my current location.

The only advantage the poweredge has is dual power supplies. Remote management is available on the dell 9020 or hp elitedesk, though if its not booting into the os, there is likely nothing you can do anyways - remotely.
Power supply failure is extremely rare...in fact, I can only recall one instance where I had to replace a power supply - and I have serviced/maintained hundreds of pc's. The one failure was on a pc that was at least 5 years old.
Point is you are way better off running a modern business class desktop...or even buying a modern server with dual power supplies of you are paranoid about it. Better yet, buy two complete business class systems for 300 each and now you have TRUE redundancy. Its a better option that paying that same money to your power company.

 

[nayr]

though if its not booting into the os, there is likely nothing you can do anyways - remotely.

all the servers I have at work have an IPMI interfaces that let you access the bios, install operating systems off the network, reboot the system.. its basically a mini standalone system with its own network interface and gives you remote desktop or KVM over IP.

much nicer setting up a bunch of servers from my office than standing in a loud and freezing datacenter.. only physical contact I make anymore is replacing failed disks or installing new servers.

 

[fenderman]

all the servers I have at work have an IPMI interfaces that let you access the bios, install operating systems off the network, reboot the system.. its basically a mini standalone system with its own network interface and gives you remote desktop or KVM over IP.

much nicer setting up a bunch of servers from my office than standing in a loud and freezing datacenter..

The dell 9020 supports intel iamt.....even with the best interfaces you cannot fix hardware issues with is usually the problem.
paying an electric companly 300-500 a year in costs is nuts for these old servers. They belong in the trash.

 

[eddiequeue]

The dell 9020 supports intel iamt.....even with the best interfaces you cannot fix hardware issues with is usually the problem.
paying an electric companly 300-500 a year in costs is nuts for these old servers. They belong in the trash.

What should my expectation be of power usage on a $500 PC that will run BI well? I've had a hard time finding anything but max power consumption numbers on systems. My hesitation has been that I will spend $500 to save $10/mo - with a 4+ year break even it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend the money buying something new, for $500 I'd be much further ahead putting my money into other things (LEDs, appliances, etc) that will save more power assuming the job is done equally well by both machines. Not challenging opinions here, just looking to try to run the numbers objectively but haven't been able to get a result that makes financial sense yet. Would a good i5 machine with a couple of drives spinning consume 30w, 50w or 100w?