New Blue Iris Box - 6th Gen I7-6700

[woody]

I've been lurking about reading many of the Blue Iris PC threads and learning much. Your collective knowledge has made my transition to BI much, much easier.

I haven't noticed any discussions on running BI on the i7 Skylake Processor. In particular what do you think about the bottom of the current Dell XPS 8900 line?
- http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-8900-desktop/pd?oc=fdcwgsk104hw10e&model_id=xps-8900-desktop
- 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-6700 Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.0 GHz)
- 8GB Dual Channel DDR4 2133MHz (4GBx2)
- 1TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
- NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 730 2GB DDR3
- Mini Tower with 3 HDD Bays
- Just under 7 bills new.

Any benefit to having Operating System and BI on a SSD?

I'm currently running on a Core Duo 2 T9600 2.8 GHz laptop with 4 MB ram, but I'm maxing the CPU (Only box I had laying around when I decided it was time to dump my AVER Hybrid Box due to software limitations was a HP HDX18 laptop). I'm running 3-2MP cams, 1 Mobotix Q24 Hemispheric & 8 Analog through a Cisco CIVS-SENC-8P video encoder. Oh, I have 3 new 4MP Hikvision Cams to add that I just purchased from Nellys using their 5% discount for IPCAMTalk

Woody

 

[MartyO]

machine looks nice, below is some info.


With respect to CPU crunching skylake has no real advantage over haswell. only improvement are integrate HD graphics and openGL benchmark..

 

[bp2008]

All things considered, that isn't a bad deal. It would be hard to build the same system for the same price. You could save $150-250 by purchasing a refurbished system based on the i7-4790 which is very close to the same speed. I bet the Skylake chip is more energy efficient, but the energy savings might be negated by the graphics card in it. It remains to be seen if Blue Iris will be able to make significant use of a graphics card, particularly one as low-end as that. If not, you might as well take the graphics card out and use onboard graphics.

There is supposedly a benefit to having Blue Iris keep its database on an SSD, but I don't know how much of an impact this has. SSDs are cheap so if I were you I would slap in a 250 GB SSD and clone the existing disk onto it with Macrium Reflect (free edition), then let BI put its database there and put all clips on the standard hard drive. It won't be a huge difference though. The main benefit of an SSD in a desktop machine is in making applications load more quickly, but if this is to be a dedicated Blue Iris box then you really won't care if apps take a little extra time to load. Once they are loaded, the SSD benefit is almost nil.

 

[GaretJax]

Does anyone know for a fact that the XPS 8900 allows us to remove the dedicated video card and use the integrated one? I know it has an HDMI out + and DP out on the chassis so I assume that it does and can, but don't know for sure. Anyone?

 

[bp2008]

Hard to say with complete certainty but usually an intel motherboard in the last few years won't have integrated video outputs unless it supports Intel's integrated graphics. There is a good chance you could use both, so you could have hardware acceleration from Intel Quick Sync and still use the dedicated video card. Believe it or not, I actually found that Blue Iris requires significantly less CPU to draw itself after I added a GTX 950 to my box, so there can be benefit from having both graphics processors enabled! No detectable difference in CPU usage while Blue Iris is in service mode or limited to a very low live preview frame rate though.

 

[GaretJax]

Hard to say with complete certainty but usually an intel motherboard in the last few years won't have integrated video outputs unless it supports Intel's integrated graphics. There is a good chance you could use both, so you could have hardware acceleration from Intel Quick Sync and still use the dedicated video card. Believe it or not, I actually found that Blue Iris requires significantly less CPU to draw itself after I added a GTX 950 to my box, so there can be benefit from having both graphics processors enabled! No detectable difference in CPU usage while Blue Iris is in service mode or limited to a very low live preview frame rate though.

OK - I am a little confused. I thought we wanted to get a system without a dedicated video card so BI could use the Hardware Acceleration available from the chip. Are you saying that we can configure BI to use the benefits of the hardware acceleration from the chip while at the same time using the benefits from the dedicated video card?

 

[Ion Barker]

I am curious to know this also! I am looking for a new BI box. My current i7-2600 is averaging 75-85% CPU loads with 20 cams and I plan on adding another 6-8 cams.

 

[bp2008]

I am curious to know this also! I am looking for a new BI box. My current i7-2600 is averaging 75-85% CPU loads with 20 cams and I plan on adding another 6-8 cams.

I'm sure you can do a lot better than that with the current box. Some things that could make a huge difference in CPU usage:

• Update to the latest Blue Iris version and enable Intel hardware acceleration
• Enable direct to disk recording for all cameras
• Reduce the camera frame rates (in each camera's web interface, NOT in Blue Iris)

Assuming you run Blue Iris with its interface open normally, these changes can also help:

• Configure a live preview frame rate limit.
• Get an efficient and modern dedicated graphics card and connect your monitor to that, but make sure the integrated Intel adapter is still enabled so you do not lose hardware accelerated h.264 decoding.

Even if you upgraded all the way to an i7-6700k I doubt you could get more than a 25% performance boost (so your CPU usage might go down to 60-70% instead of 75-85%). The key to success is in proper tuning of Blue Iris.

 

[bp2008]

OK - I am a little confused. I thought we wanted to get a system without a dedicated video card so BI could use the Hardware Acceleration available from the chip. Are you saying that we can configure BI to use the benefits of the hardware acceleration from the chip while at the same time using the benefits from the dedicated video card?

Yes, you can reap benefits of a dedicated graphics card and still use Intel Quick Sync from the integrated GPU as long as you keep the integrated GPU enabled and active (READ MORE). In the past, the best recommendation has been to not get a dedicated video card because it did not make a lot of difference to performance, but it does always increase the cost and power consumption of the system.

Now, with hardware accelerated h.264 decoding available, a new Blue Iris performance bottleneck has been revealed to me. Blue Iris takes quite a lot of CPU time to draw video to the screen. The amount of CPU time required grows with screen resolution and video frame rate. The addition of hardware acceleration allows many of us to increase our frame rates quite a lot. However I think most people don't have a monitor or TV larger than 1920x1080, and this keeps the CPU usage under control. I tried outputting at 4K with my intel integrated graphics and found the CPU usage to be overwhelming. My Blue Iris uses 20% at idle, but when I opened the interface on a 4K monitor the CPU usage shot up to 90-100% and the system became mostly unresponsive and I think Blue Iris even crashed once. After I installed an Nvidia GTX 950 graphics card, Blue Iris remained at the same 20% at idle with the console closed, but now it can handle drawing its interface at 4K resolution with about 70-75% CPU where it would have maxed out and stopped working before I added the new graphics card. This level of usage is still more than I am comfortable because it uses more power and there is the risk that usage will spike much higher. You never want Blue Iris to run out of CPU even for a moment. So I currently have the live preview frame rate limited to 6 FPS which keeps CPU usage close to 35%.

Please note I cannot say which video cards may or may not help. The one I put in my box is an Nvidia GTX 950, which is from their newest generation so it contains Nvidia's latest technology. It is possible that an older card or one from a competing manufacturer would provide more or less or no benefit at all. I just don't understand why it made the difference that it did. I just know it made a difference for me.

 

[Ion Barker]

I'm sure you can do a lot better than that with the current box. Some things that could make a huge difference in CPU usage:

• Update to the latest Blue Iris version and enable Intel hardware acceleration - DONE
• Enable direct to disk recording for all cameras - DONE
• Reduce the camera frame rates (in each camera's web interface, NOT in Blue Iris) - working on that now, all my GV cams were set to 30fps. Setting popular cams to 15 and others to 10.

Assuming you run Blue Iris with its interface open normally, these changes can also help:

• Configure a live preview frame rate limit. - DONE
• Get an efficient and modern dedicated graphics card and connect your monitor to that, but make sure the integrated Intel adapter is still enabled so you do not lose hardware accelerated h.264 decoding.

Even if you upgraded all the way to an i7-6700k I doubt you could get more than a 25% performance boost (so your CPU usage might go down to 60-70% instead of 75-85%). The key to success is in proper tuning of Blue Iris.

Thanks for those tips, i will try them out and report back!

My machine has on board Intel graphics and an AMD Radeon HD 4650 card right now.

 

[bp2008]

Thanks for those tips, i will try them out and report back!

My machine has on board Intel graphics and an AMD Radeon HD 4650 card right now.

15 FPS on my main cams and 10 on my less important ones is exactly what I do too

Since you have a dedicated card, you probably have to make a special effort to keep the integrated graphics enabled (which is required for hardware accelerated decoding to work!). This page has a good guide for how to make it happen, but basically it says "enable the integrated graphics in your BIOS and make sure one of the onboard video outputs is active": https://mirillis.com/en/products/tutorials/action-tutorial-intel-quick-sync-setup_for_desktops.html (Note the last step of that guide is application-specific and should be ignored)

 

[Ion Barker]

I made those suggested changes.. BOOM! down to 39% CPU load! same 20 cameras.

Thanks again!!

 

[DebrodeD]

Quick question for you all, does an i7-2600s support hardware acceleration with blue iris? I've had a little trouble tracking this info down. Thanks!

 

[bp2008]

Quick question for you all, does an i7-2600s support hardware acceleration with blue iris? I've had a little trouble tracking this info down. Thanks!

Yes. The thing you need to look for is "Quick Sync Video" support, which you can find here: Intel® Core™ i7-2600S Processor (8M Cache, up to 3.80 GHz) Product Specifications

 

[Camit]

15 FPS on my main cams and 10 on my less important ones is exactly what I do too

You can tell the difference between 10 and 15 ???

 

[bp2008]

Yes

 

[nbstl68]

Do you set your iframes to match your FPS?
I see several different threads recommend that but my cam mfg recommends and always defaults to iframe setting of double the FPS.
I've read up on what iframes are\do but don't really understand the significance of why to set it to match or double or how it can be the cause of issues.

 

[bp2008]

Reasons for a shorter iframe interval:

• Reducing the iframe interval has been known to improve video stability with Blue Iris, with some cameras. Specifically setting it to match the FPS has been most helpful. That is the main reason anyone says to do it.
• Video decoding can only begin with an iframe, so a lower iframe interval often means less delay before you get usable video when connecting to a stream or when beginning to record the stream. For example if you had a ridiculously high iframe interval of 10 times the frame rate, it could take up to 10 seconds to begin showing video when you connect to the camera, and up to 10 seconds to actually start recording after a motion trigger.

Reasons for a longer iframe interval:

• Iframes use a lot more data in the stream than other frame types. Longer iframe interval yields more efficient use of bandwidth and disk space.

 

[DebrodeD]

I've got the option between an i7-2600s or i5-3470s, all else being equal, which should I go with for blue iris? Both passmark above my current cpu (i3-4130t). I'm getting them refurbished (the whole pc) for under $200.

 

[bp2008]

i7-2600s is more capable than i5-3470s. At best, all you'd gain from the newer generation is a tiny bit of energy efficiency, while you'd lose processing power due to downgrading from i7 to i5.