Quadcore or server processor for x264?

[graysky]

Look closely, because they used x264 via MeGUI for this test.

Also see this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122318) thread in here. We've collected a pretty big data set on MeGUI/x264 on several quad and dual core chips encoding the same mpg source with the same jobs files.

[morph166955]

very interesting. thanks to all for your input you have definitely gave me a lot to consider. I believe now that going with the 1.86GHz xeon is not worth it for a few reasons. my main reason is that its still 1066MHz as opposed to the 1333MHz and I want to be on the 1333MHz bus at this point if I'm spending the $$.

I think my final configuration that I'll be ordering this week is:

-2x Intel E5345 Xeon Processors (Clovertown Core) @ 2.33GHz & 1333MHz FSB

-Asus DSBF-D12 Dual Socket 771 Motherboard (Intel 5000P Chipset, SSI EEB 3.61 Configuration)

-4x Crucial 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM CT12872AF667 (running in four channel mode)

-Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10K RPM WD1500ADFD (for OS)

-Western Digital Caviar RE2 500GB 7200RPM WD5000YS (for video data/scratch I'll actually have 2 since I have one that I use now)

-iStarUSA Storm Series D-200L 2U Rackmount

-NEC AD-7170A DVD Burner

If anyone has any suggestions/recommendations/comments I'd very much appreciate hearing them. This system will solely be used for video encoding and streaming that video stuff to my media center. More specifically for x264 encoding of HDTV recordings I have made as well as converting HDDVD/BLURAY to x264 mkv's. Ill be running FreeBSD 6.2 with a custom compiled SMP kernel. I'll also be building custom versions of x264/mencoder that are optimized with gcc 4.3 to run as fast as humanly possible (plus all of the assorted libraries that they need optimized as well). My goal is to avoid all precompiled binaries in favor of creating optimized everything from source! I believe (and sure as hell hope) that this setup should be fast enough to do "real time encoding" of x264 (one-pass) or even faster. my really rough math using the chart from the megui post should give me ~150fps on the first pass and ~67fps for a second pass (using korbin44's non-overclocked results, adapted for a 2.33ghz processor and then doubled since ill have twice the number of cores as he has). and yes...ill run the cpu time tests on my setup to see how fast I can get it to run (although i'll have to figure out how to run it on bsd since windows aint ever touching this box if I have anything to say about it).

I'm ordering this system earlier this week (monday night, tuesday morning at the latest probably) since I'm having it sent to my house for me to build/setup while im home for spring break which starts next friday for me. Lemme know what you all think and if anyone has any suggestions for tweaks/changes I'm more then open to them.

[graysky]

Send me a PM and I'll put the test files back up on the the www server when you're read. I dunno how it'll work under *NIX since MeGUI is a win32 app. Maybe you can put windows on a temp partition, run the test, and nuke it or something. I'd really like to see how 8 cores/x264.exe scale :p

[morph166955]

most definitely (expect to wait about 2-3 weeks though before I do, im only building it next week in my spare time so I gotta assume it wont be ready to roll till the week after that).

seeing as windows does have a FEW tools that I MAY and emphasize MAY consider using at some point, i suppose i can partition the drive up and dual boot it BSD/XP for the occasion I want to use XP. the crappy part about that though is that the 500GB drives wont be accessible unless I use NTFS (or FAT if it will work at that size, maybe FAT32 i dunno) and I don't know if BSD is going to particularly enjoy that.

I'm realllllly anxious to see how this works too. While it wont be a 100% accurate test, I suspose I could still take the source and the megui settings (since all megui really does is run the same command line programs I would) and run that in bsd. I'm hunting around for a way to run avisynth or something similar on bsd now to see if theres a way to do it.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Good luck. Getting AviSynth working on a *nix system is theoretically possible with Wine, but my god man you don't know how painful that can be...

Just use Windows for video encoding :devil: :devil:

Or if you don't care about avisynth filters, then just feed x264 on the command line from a pipe.

~MiSfit

[morph166955]

run windows for crazy speed video encoding...let me think about that...no :p

running an 8 core system on xp, well I might as well buy some stock in whoever makes Excedrin. now that i'm thinking about it, do i have to load XP64 to make this work properly? will xp handle 8 cores? I dont know why I'm remembering an upper limit of 4 cores with xp but I remember something like that. If I have to do anything that involves resizing or cropping or w/e i can use mplayer/mencoder which can link into x264. I'll figure something out though, since up till now I've never needed to use avisynth on my system to do anything because mencoder has been able to handle it.

[jeffy]

Theory:

Operating system Number of processors Physical RAM
Microsoft Windows XP Professional 2 4 GB
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition 2 128 GB
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888732/en-us

XP Professional supports max. of 2 CPUs.

"Supports up to 4 gigabytes (GB) of RAM and up to two symmetric multiprocessors."
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/features.mspx

http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1189223,00.html

The following article says that CNET Networks used XP Professional SP2 on a dual Xeon 5355 setup.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6663792.html

[foxyshadis]

If you set at least one partition up with ext3 instead of xfs or whatever, you can use explore2fs (http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs) or their beta of Virtual Volumes (which also works with reiserfs).

Lots of people get by just fine with mencoder, though.

[jeffy]

If you set at least one partition up with ext3 instead of xfs or whatever, you can use explore2fs (http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs) or their beta of Virtual Volumes (which also works with reiserfs).

Lots of people get by just fine with mencoder, though.

foxyshadis, do you have any practical experience with this, please?
Would it work like explore2fs?
http://fs-driver.org/index.html

[Shinigami-Sama]

run windows for crazy speed video encoding...let me think about that...no :p

running an 8 core system on xp, well I might as well buy some stock in whoever makes Excedrin. now that i'm thinking about it, do i have to load XP64 to make this work properly? will xp handle 8 cores? I dont know why I'm remembering an upper limit of 4 cores with xp but I remember something like that. If I have to do anything that involves resizing or cropping or w/e i can use mplayer/mencoder which can link into x264. I'll figure something out though, since up till now I've never needed to use avisynth on my system to do anything because mencoder has been able to handle it.
XP has Licenses for 2 CPUs, but thats an Easy Registry switch
as for Cores I've yet to see any definitive documentation from MS about it; havn't looked to hard though

[morph166955]

ah...ok cool. well im ordering the case, drives and motherboard now. im ordering the ram and cpu tonight probably. I guess that I'll dual boot it with bsd being primary and xp being secondary.

[akupenguin]

foxyshadis, do you have any practical experience with this, please?
Would it work like explore2fs?
http://fs-driver.org/index.html

I am using Ext2IFS and am mostly happy with it. The one feature it doesn't support is symlinks.

[jeffy]

I am using Ext2IFS and am mostly happy with it. The one feature it doesn't support is symlinks.
Thank you for sharing the info.

[foxyshadis]

well the other reason for selling the server is because im planning on working it into a deal I have going right now that wont be around in a few months. Any idea what kind of a speed boost i'd see if i waited for the E5345 vs the E5320 (even a guess is good)?

@foxy...can you go more in depth about the intel/memory bandwidth thing you mentioned?

Sorry, I missed this. If it's FB-DIMM, as you mentioned elsewhere, there's no inherent bottleneck, since the technology is designed for 8- and 16-way servers. I was thinking you were using a two-socket desktop board with a P965; dual-channel just can't keep up with 8 cores. AMD had the advantage there because each socket gets separate dual channels. I suppose you're getting a 5000X board?

[morph166955]

I'm not going to type the entire thing up again or copy it since I think that break forum rules so look here since this basically relates directly to what this thread is talking about.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=124099