What tests should I run on my 8-Core X5355 Setup for everyone?

[morph166955]

For those who saw my posts in some other threads asking questions and wondering just how fast this bad ass is going to be, I thought I would open up a thread for anyone and everyone to offer up suggestions and/or requests for benchmarks or whatever else you all come up with. Below is a post I made in the MeGUI CPU Test thread that I'm moving to here in terms of specs and stuff.


2x Intel X5355 2.66GHZ 1333MHz FSB Quad Core Xeon's
4x Crucial 1GB DDR2 667 FB-DIMM's
Asus DSBF-D12 Motherboard
Western Digitial WD1500ADFD 150GB 10000RPM Raptor (OS Drive)
2x WD5000YS 500GB 7200RPM (Video Scratch Drives)
NEC AD-7170A DVD Burner (18x DVD SL Write, 8x DVD DL Write)
Antec 2U26ATX400XR-2 2U Case (I'm aware of the power supply problem with this being that its not the proper one, I'm looking for a power supply now...If anyone has an suggestions for a sweet 2U Power Supply thats SSI EEB 3.61 which i believe means EPS12V compatible I'm very interested to know)

Depending on when the CPU's/RAM ship (I ordered them about 20 mins ago), I should have some nice results for you guys some time late next week/early the week after depending when I get it all done (I'm going to Florida at the end of the week so thats going to be the real time determiner). Anyone want to take any guesses on what my results are going to be? My guess is ~195FPS on my first pass and ~75 on my second pass (assuming im running it in XP, I'm under the belief that my freebsd setup will run even faster then that).

So other question. Is there any reason I have to run XP over 2000? Running 2000 on this means I don't have to activate it and deal with all of that. Is there any reason for me to be running XP64 vs XP32 for this either? I know the newer version of x264 can utilize ssse3 which I believe requires XP64. While your test uses an older version, I think I'm going to run a test with both to see some speed differences.

Anything else anyone wants me to try? I'll probably start another thread once its in/built for me to run some different tests with seeing as this is probably the fastest system on here at this point thats setup to specifically do video encoding/editing.


If anyones got suggestions for things I should do software/setup wize when I do it, let me know. As of now I'm going to dual boot it, XP (probably XP64 unless I get any reasons not to use 64, also as said above possibly Win2000 if that will handle this to avoid activation problems or w/e else XP decides to throw at me) and FreeBSD 6.2 built with SMP configured into the kernel. BSD will be the primary OS/Bootloader since I like it more and I think that I can manage it easier remotely plus I can shut off a whole hell of a lot more things servicewize on BSD that I can't do on windows. Imagine how much processing power I'm going to save alone not running a GUI or ANYTHING else for that matter that requires resources PLUS having a streamlined & SMP Optimized kernel built specifically for this system (maybe even with core2/ssse3 options used by gcc 4.3...we shall see...). I have to look into freebsd's 64-bit support but im pretty sure its in there and all nice looking now at version 6.2.

[morph166955]

On a side note, I also wanted to say a big THANKS again to everyone who offered up info and insight into things in the past week or so while I've been planning this system out. You all definitely helped me out a great deal so please give yourselves a big pat on the back from me and if any of you have any benchmarks and/or tests you want me to run, I'll be sure to put you guys at the top of the list!

[Blue_MiSfit]

insert bit of rabid jealousy here.

That said, please please don't run XP64 :) It's crap. Well - strike that. The OS is fine, but the existing 64 bit video encoding software isn't really up to snuff, at least not the last time I tried it. x264.exe is very good, but AviSynth etc are not all there. Resizers are still painfully slow IIRC, and most of the plugins aren't ported. Squid_80 is doing a great job, but I think he's all by himself, and thats a big job.

XP32 should be faster overall, if you plan on using AviSynth in any way.

If you're running mencoder / ffmpeg and x264 directly, then 64 bit SMP BSD should be terrifyingly fast. RAID up those hard drives :D

As far as tests, the MeGUI tests that have been floating around are very standardized at this point. Still, that means AviSynth, so if you want to see what your system is capable of, let's just see a pure x264 encode, maybe some 1080p sources if you can..

~MiSfit

[morph166955]

I had to sell TWO of my servers to get this thing and im just breaking even. One of which had a 2.0TB drive plus 4GB Ram and an assortment of other things. I realized that with the current cost of dvd storage having 2.0TB of space to store my media is worthless. and as for raid, ive actually found that my raid array is very slightly slower then a single drive when doing video encodes. I am however contimplating running everything on ramdisc's if I can for this encode to see if that will speed it up being that its the new FB stuff and all that jazz.

I'm not an avisynth man...nothing wrong with it I just never got into it. I've been using freebsd to do all my encoding and trying to run avisynth under wine is a headache I've thus far avoided. I'll be running x264 that im custom compiling with gcc 4.3 using core2/ssse3 optimization plus the ssse3 optimizations that x264 now has. I have a working mingw/msys that has 4.3 running and can successfully compile x264 with core2/ssse3 so I'm hoping that will be blistering fast. I'll use gcc 4.3 in bsd also to make some very fast versions of everything as well (saddly mplayer/mencoder/ffmpeg refuses to work with gcc4.3 & core2 but i can at least use prescott/ssse3 for that part of it.

As for content...lets just say I have some VERY high quality 720p and 1080p source to use...thats first up on my list after i do some benchmarks and run that megui benchmark in this forum since some of those guys helped me out on designing this bad boy.

I'm trying to figure out which version of freebsd 6.2 to use. the options are i386 & ia-64. problem is i believe ia-64 is for itanium/itanium2 and not for what im running. in fact i dont believe that ia-64 will even work with my setup. I'll figure it out at some point once im home this weekend before the cpu's all come in. Its going to probably take a week or more to get this thing running at peak and to get everything all compiled where its close to how fast it can be, and then a good 2-3 months to get it perfect. The whole system is going to be in a constant state of flux...and then once i get it exactly how i want it, back it all up, format it to get any misc stuff leftover from the testing process that could be causing a slight slowdown, and loading it all 100% perfectly knowing its best setup.

My big problem tonight is power supply...i gotta buy a 2U EPS12V power supply tonight so that it ships out for this thing to use asap. It also has to be a front mount supply that has the cord running to the back like the one thats in there now. I'd really enjoy a modular powersupply where i can add the wires i want (my buddy got this guy a few months ago and said it was sweet http://www.xoxide.com/ultra-x-connect2-uvblue.html ...i want something similar in idea, althoguh i can deal with less blue lights). recommendations are welcome and encouraged!

[Blue_MiSfit]

Good thoughts. Getting that power supply is crucial!

Also, ia-64 is Itanium only IIRC. The instruction set for hybrid x86/x64 chips is x86_64, which all new AMD and Intel chips support.

~MiSfit.

[morph166955]

yes im aware of the x86_64...its a matter of I cant find anything on it (havent really looked that hard so it very well could be there). the only images i could find is under their i386 title.

[Blue_MiSfit]

http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64.html

the name is misleading.. I guess people are referring to anything that does x86_64 as AMD64 now... :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

[morph166955]

powersupply is now ordered...i took the easy route out since i needed the front mount and ordered a spare eps supply direct from antec that they use in their 3U case (i checked the dimensions and screw configs, as far as i can tell they use the same size for both...go figure.)

As for that amd64 thing...thats plane stupid on their part. anyone who doesnt specifically look would think its an amd only thing. im downloading the iso's now and im going to load it on my laptop (it has a core2 so it should work the same). thanks though for the info though! much appreciated.

[Inventive Software]

For a laugh, what about DivX SD encoding? Since that's multithreaded, though I can't remember how many cores it supports, it'll be interesting to see just how fast that'll go! :D x264, SD resolution would be interesting, to see if you could get that at least real-time.

[zambelli]

Wait, does XP even support 8 cores? I'm pretty sure Windows 2000 doesn't, unless maybe the server version.

[morph166955]

very good question! i know it can do 4 cores since we've seen it already...i guess we will find out!

wanna talk about aggravating delays...the motherboard, case and drives are in...the cpu and ram arent due till tuesday...and im still waiting for the power supply to ship! this thing is going to be sitting in the corner staring at me for like a week until i can even turn it on! lol im going to go crazy

[foxyshadis]

Wait, does XP even support 8 cores? I'm pretty sure Windows 2000 doesn't, unless maybe the server version.

Sure does, as long as it's 2 sockets. (Unless you hacked in the server kernel, but you might as well use server in that case.) I've seen benchmarks of 2 dual-core 5010 Xeons with hyperthreading on XP, but might have been XP64. The task manager graphs were very, very thin. :p

[morph166955]

lol if they were thin with 4...im going to love 8! Im sitting looking at all the parts now...it never occured to me how HUGE an extended atx board is (12x13!!!). like that sounds like its big but until you see it and just like admire its size you just dont get it.

[Bigmango]

As you seem to prefer custom compiling everything to match your hardware for performance, why don't you install Gentoo Linux ?

This is the best OS for custom compiled systems as it has all the tools, especially portage like BSD, but more software available.

Just set your cflags for your core 2 and let the rig install the whole system by itself, built with ggc 4.3 from the ground up. All the tools you will ever need like x264, etc... are in portage so once your system wide cflags are set everything is 1 emerge away...

Anyway, this is of course personal preference, BSD is nice, but with Gentoo you get the same, if not more flexibility and on top of that you get much more software...

Best wishes, looking forward to seeing your benchmarks ;)

[morph166955]

While I agree using ports/portage is easier, it generally misses things and/or adds things I dont want/need and/or doesnt use the specific version of the software that I may want to use (say x264 gets a new revision that does something I want (which is usually always)...the ports/portage version may not get updated for a few days and that can be annoying). I've been using freebsd now as my *nix os for give or take 8-9 years so I'm very familiar with it. I've written some scripts to auto cvs/svn specific software I use to install the system for me (stuff like bash, gcc, etc). As for the rest, well I actually enjoy hands on installing and configuring of the software myself. Thanks for your input though as that was definitely a good point.

[Bigmango]

While I agree using ports/portage is easier, it generally misses things and/or adds things I dont want/need and/or doesnt use the specific version of the software that I may want to use (say x264 gets a new revision that does something I want (which is usually always)...the ports/portage version may not get updated for a few days and that can be annoying). I've been using freebsd now as my *nix os for give or take 8-9 years so I'm very familiar with it. I've written some scripts to auto cvs/svn specific software I use to install the system for me (stuff like bash, gcc, etc). As for the rest, well I actually enjoy hands on installing and configuring of the software myself. Thanks for your input though as that was definitely a good point.

Yes BSD is a great OS.

Regarding new versions not in portage (you have been at home with bsd for almost 10 years so I'm not trying to convert you, just handing over some more information): you can setup a personal local portage tree with your ebuilds. In your example, it would take 10 seconds to edit the x264.ebuild and change the version number (it's a variable that goes up to the file name/remote server dir name, etc..., so you just change it in 1 place); then "emerge x264.ebuild" will fetch the file from the x264.nl server, build and install the new version ;)

As for cvs/svn : you can make the ebuilds fetch the source from cvs/svn. So everytime you "emerge myebuild-cvs.ebuild" it will fetch the latest cvs source and install it. This is also the better way for keping track of installed things and makes uninstalling things easier.

The bottom line is that Gentoo is an OS that was made from the ground up to be built from source, so it has the best tools in the industry to do and automate source installs.

Well, portage was made after ports so both systems have a lot in common.

[Shinigami-Sama]

Wait, does XP even support 8 cores? I'm pretty sure Windows 2000 doesn't, unless maybe the server version.

XP 64 does I think, it is a striped down Server 2k3 after all

though if you want a million cores theres always Solaris
supports up to 72 twin threaded CPUs
if you have about 4.5M USD for the 25k server
:rolleyes:

[HookedOnTV]

The MeGUI test in this forum would be great to see.

[morph166955]

the MeGUI test is among the first to be run.

and for those wondering when this all arrives...i just got the final shipping confirmation...all the remaining parts will be in tomorrow! hopefully I can get it all built and partially installed tomorrow night, possibly leave it running installing overnight and then maybe do some runs on wednesday/thursday if its all done by then. otherwise you will all have to wait till im home on sunday from a family wedding for me to start having this thing do some "forced hard labor"

[Inventive Software]

"Forced"? We said nothing about forced. ;)

[morph166955]

lol i know...twas jokin

[morph166955]

ok...system is offically loaded with freebsd. i had a weeee bit of an annoying insulation/short problem going on with the motherboard that was holding me off...long story short, that is the most insulated board ive ever installed.

It's installing bash now, and x264 is next up (yea i really cant wait and it looks awesome seeing the number 7 listed under cpuid in "top"). im going to go into the megui jobs and see if i can duplicate the settings its using on the megui test on this to see how fast this thing is. more to come soon.

[morph166955]

systems up :D. pictures uploading shortly. windows is loading now. megui test within a few hours!

[HookedOnTV]

If the board/chips allow the bus speed/multiplier to be dropped it would be nice to see how the lesser Clovertown chips would perform on the megui test (6x @ 1333, 7x @ 1333, 6x @ 1066) for those of us with smaller pocket books.

[0gg]

Hello

I have
2x Xeon Clovertown 5330 2,13 @ 2,66 with Bsel and @ 2,9 Ghz with Systool (Watercooled)
4 Go Ram PC667 FBDIMM
Maxtor SAS 15k 146 Go
GeForce 8800 GTS
Vista 64 bits Ultimate


I would like to bench with MeGUI and mt.dll to improve speed with 8 cores.

I put the mt.dll into the Avisynth 2.5 Plug In Directory
I put the avisynth.dll into the c:\windows\system32 directory

But I'm still ready many page to know :
- where do I add "SetMTmode(2,0)" ?

Best regards

[morph166955]

at the top of your avs file.

be careful with the heat btw...ive come to learn that when these things get cooking they get very hot very fast. i think ive finally nipped that in the butt tonight by swaping out the entire cause, psu and cooling setup but i guess only time will tell.

[0gg]

ok I"ll try it tonight.

don't worry about the heat :
in IDLE, processors are between 24°C and 28 °C
in BURN, processors are between 39° C and 40 °C
with 3 fan on the watercooling dissipator

my config : http://smpfr.mesdiscussions.net/smpfr/Hardware/topic-unique-clovertown-sujet_718_7.htm#t15515
=> .... with 2 fan on the watercooling dissipator

[morph166955]

impressive temps. im averaging mid 20's now idle, im going to run some load tests today now with the new cooling setup to see what this thing can do.

[0gg]

Should it be possible to rar or zip your MeGui folder with your .avs & settings and upload it somewhere ?

... by this way, we'll have the same processing method

(if it is possible, you can give me the link to download by MP)

Thx.

[morph166955]

im running linux on the box now so i dont have any way to zip anything up for you unfortunately. depending on what your planning on doing with it, a system like that is not going to run near its potential on vista because of all of vista's overhead. im working on my own custom linux install (all from source) thats optimized to work on this system.

[0gg]

arf .... ok

I'm planning to encode in the highest quality, SD (DV Codec) and HD (1920x1080 50i in DNxHD Codec) sources from .mov (QuickTime export) to x264 in local with my 2x5330 @2,9 and next in render farm

Is it possible to post here the .avs code optimised for Clovertown in local ?

Thx a lot.

[morph166955]

i honestly never use avisynth. im a *nix person so i generally use mencoder to dump raw i420 frames out to a fifo pipe and then have x264 read them in raw from that pipe and do its work all cli. mencoder does my reading and editing of of the video if i need to. If your going to be doing a lot of video encoding on it, you may want to dual boot your system with linux and run something like what I am running to get your performance up. I've run tests on both, and the linux setup gets me a much higher cpu usage & fps on my HD encodes. As we speak im compiling a linux distro for myself to do this as fast as humanly possible (its a long process since so dont expect any results for the next few days!)

[0gg]

and do you this it is possible to upload your compilation ?

.... I have another Clovertown workstation wich is not yet setup

[morph166955]

its possible however its going to take quite some time for me to get a good stable build going and working that I'd feel comfortable releasing even calling it an alpha version. as it stands now, since I'm building everything from scratch, I'm building it on the i386 tree and then I'm going to have to cross compile everything to x86_64 so in essence I'll be doing this whole thing twice! I'll know more tomorrow after I get the i386 system fired up. I've been considering creating a "multimedia" distro of linux that was built with the sole purpose of doing encoding as fast as possible (eg, no extra frills, no unnecessary libraries, all libraries optimized like crazy to work as fast as possible, and possibly some builds of current stuff like a recent x264 svn, xvid, mencoder, etc). I'm probably going to make a post in the linux section tomorrow once I get my thoughts down.

[Lenny_Nero]

Wait, does XP even support 8 cores? I'm pretty sure Windows 2000 doesn't, unless maybe the server version.

Windows 2000 can support/see (and use) up to 32 chips/cores out of the box and the server and data centre versions can see and use up to 32 GB, (its in the registry on 2k pro as well just needs to be turned on) its XP that is the kludge where multi core support comes in. The only thing it does not have is big disk (>137 GB), but all you have to do is add SP3 and put in the EnableBigLBA DWord in the registry (http://www.48bitlba.com/enablebiglba.htm), which is easy and takes less than 5 minutes.

Win2000 is the best M$ OS by a long way, and this is the reason why it still has the longest support lifeline from M$ at 10 years minimum after SP5 comes out.

[Crest]

Encode a 1080-25p x264 movie :D

[delacroixp]

ok I"ll try it tonight.

don't worry about the heat :
in IDLE, processors are between 24°C and 28 °C
in BURN, processors are between 39° C and 40 °C
with 3 fan on the watercooling dissipator

my config : http://smpfr.mesdiscussions.net/smpfr/Hardware/topic-unique-clovertown-sujet_718_7.htm#t15515
=> .... with 2 fan on the watercooling dissipator
great rigg... watercooling rocks...


:):D:eek:
Pascal

[delacroixp]

im running linux on the box now so i dont have any way to zip anything up for you unfortunately. depending on what your planning on doing with it, a system like that is not going to run near its potential on vista because of all of vista's overhead. im working on my own custom linux install (all from source) thats optimized to work on this system.
great rigg... linux rocks...

The last time I used UNIX was at varsity (com sci) using the vi (http://www.ccsf.edu/Pub/Fac/vi.html) text editor for Pascal programs.


:):D:eek:
Pascal

[delacroixp]

Encode a 1080-25p x264 movie :D
Welcome to the world of extreme machines... good spot for your 1st post...


:):D:eek:
Pascal

[HookedOnTV]

Would either of you be interested in trying the MeGui test with the processors clocked at 6 x 266? To see how the entry level 8 core does.

[morph166955]

As of last month im refusing to run windows on that box for several reasons. the most prominent is that i cant run the system to its potential on xp considering i cant even get it to recognize all of my ram. What I found though if you want to compare it and get a rough benchmark, just use some math to reduce my full speed results by what ever ratio you want to go to (so for like the 1.6 multiply my results by 1.6/2.66). When I did the math out before running it I came with in 5-10 fps of what my actual runs came too so give that a whirl.

[FreQi]

I've got two machines with Dual X5355 Xeon's and 16gig of ram running Server 2003 that I would be willing to run some tests on. I already ran the x264 test graysky started (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122318) and my results were very comparable to yours morph166955. I am interested in trying MT.dll, but I am not familiar with the avisynth syntax. Can you post an example .avs ?

Here's the original avs from his test.
global MeGUI_darx = 4
global MeGUI_dary = 3
DGDecode_mpeg2source("C:\work\test-new.d2v")
AssumeTFF()
Telecide(guide=1,post=2,vthresh=35) # IVTC
Decimate(quality=3) # remove dup. frames
crop( 2, 0, -10, -4)
Spline36Resize(640,480) # Spline36 (Neutral)
I've already put the .dll's in place. Now what do I have to change to the avs to use them?

[morph166955]

I think its just the SetMT command thats at the bottom of his first post. Just throw that into the source (i did it at the first line) and it should do it.

[delacroixp]

I've got two machines with Dual X5355 Xeon's and 16gig of ram running Server 2003 that I would be willing to run some tests on.

Awesome rig... don't you just love 16 GB of RAM...
But are there any 16 core (Quad quad-core) systems out there... somewhere... somehow...


:):D:eek:
Pascal

[morph166955]

i dont know if there are motherboards out to do that lol...but it would be sweet if there were! that would be one nasty lookin board though. mine is an extended atx and its packed with two chips let alone 4!!!