Server CPU upgrade ( corse vs clock speed)

[RDSII64 4]

My current Emby server runs a pair of E5-2680's @2.8 ghtz and 128 gigs of DDR3 and I'm looking to upgrade.
My search has led me to both a pair of E5-2678W V2's @3.4 ghtz and a pair of E5-2697 V2's @2.7 ghtz.
My choice comes down to more cores or more clock speed. Which is the better upgrade for a media server.
If it helps, I run the free version of Emby so there is no gpu transcoding. All the heavy lifting is done by the CPU's

[BAlGaInTl 279]

Why the upgrade?  What is your server struggling with now?

Personally, I think cores > clock speed.  But I do all my transcoding in software.

It probably depends on what else you are doing with the system.

[Sammy 735]

The real question is, "Why intel?" Ryzen7 is way more bang for your buck at low operating temperatures. If you need more go to Ryzen9 or Threadripper.

My Ryzen 7, 3700x with a GTX 1060 6Gb doesn't break a sweat.

[BAlGaInTl 279]

38 minutes ago, Sammy said:

The real question is, "Why intel?" Ryzen7 is way more bang for your buck at low operating temperatures. If you need more go to Ryzen9 or Threadripper.

My Ryzen 7, 3700x with a GTX 1060 6Gb doesn't break a sweat.

I'm guessing it's because the OP can re-use the MB/RAM in this particular upgrade.

It's tougher to compare enterprise grade server hardware with consumer grade hardware.  That's why I think it depends on what "else" the system is doing. If it's just Emby, then yeah... there are a lot of different upgrade paths.

[RDSII64 4]

2 hours ago, BAlGaInTl said:

I'm guessing it's because the OP can re-use the MB/RAM in this particular upgrade.

It's tougher to compare enterprise grade server hardware with consumer grade hardware.  That's why I think it depends on what "else" the system is doing. If it's just Emby, then yeah... there are a lot of different upgrade paths.

Yes I want to re-use my MB/RAM. 

[rbjtech 4223]

Assuming you have a transcoding bottleneck (the only real emby workload using the CPU), then the best bang for your buck by far will to purchase emby premier and a suitable GPU.

It doesn't matter how many cores/threads or fast a CPU is, it is not as fast as dedicated hardware accelerated media decoders/encoders on the GPU silicon.

You can't of course find any GPU's out there at the moment lol, but when they are available at mrrp, then this is your best - keep everything else as is.

[veehexx1 12]

On 08/04/2021 at 10:56, rbjtech said:

Assuming you have a transcoding bottleneck (the only real emby workload using the CPU), then the best bang for your buck by far will to purchase emby premier and a suitable GPU.

It doesn't matter how many cores/threads or fast a CPU is, it is not as fast as dedicated hardware accelerated media decoders/encoders on the GPU silicon.

You can't of course find any GPU's out there at the moment lol, but when they are available at mrrp, then this is your best - keep everything else as is.

i'd agree with this - get premier and use HW encoding.

GPU - i was looking for a few weeks for a nv1050 which seems to be a recommended GPU but even used was more than i wanted to spend out. i actually ended up with a quadro p400. single slot, cheaper than even anything used right now and in stock with various suppliers, since it's not a card in huge demand. only issue i have is 2GB vram so it cant handle 2 or more 4k transcodes.fine for me since i'd either be using a single 4k stream, or 2x =<1080 but vram is definitely something it could affect others.

Edited April 13, 2021 by veehexx1

[Swynol 375]

for me cores vs clock speed i think of it like this.

Clock speed, the higher it is the faster it will accomplish a single task

Cores - the more cores the more simultaneous tasks.

In most cases i would always priorities cores over clock speed, especially in virtual environments. Being able to process multiple tasks simultaneously would benefit transcoding to multiple users.

[Carlo 4330]

The flip side is if software transcoding and a particular path can only use 2 to 4 cores max then speed is better as more cores can't be used.

So it depends...

[BAlGaInTl 279]

On 4/11/2021 at 4:25 PM, veehexx1 said:

i'd agree with this - get premier and use HW encoding.

GPU - i was looking for a few weeks for a nv1050 which seems to be a recommended GPU but even used was more than i wanted to spend out. i actually ended up with a quadro p400. single slot, cheaper than even anything used right now and in stock with various suppliers, since it's not a card in huge demand. only issue i have is 2GB vram so it cant handle 2 or more 4k transcodes.fine for me since i'd either be using a single 4k stream, or 2x =<1080 but vram is definitely something it could affect others.

I just picked up the Quadro P620 with 2GB VRAM for around $140 (shipped) off eBay.  It was a new system pull.

I'm not sure how many 4K transcodes it can do, but most of my content is just HD (1080/720).  I typically only have 1-2 transcodes going on at any given time, so the card more than meets my needs.

It was an extremely good upgrade for my system (Xeon E3-1271 V3) since there was no integrated (QuickSync) graphics.

It's cool to see a couple of transcodes with almost no hit to the rest of the performance of my system.

I've successfully tested up to 4 or so simultaneous transcodes without issue.  I didn't push it any further than that because I'll never go over that.  I think that it's rare I'll even get to 2 because the transcode is so fast now.  It will transcode an entire movie in a fraction of the time it used to take.

 

 

[veehexx1 12]

On 26/04/2021 at 18:34, BAlGaInTl said:

I just picked up the Quadro P620 with 2GB VRAM for around $140 (shipped) off eBay.  It was a new system pull.

I'm not sure how many 4K transcodes it can do, but most of my content is just HD (1080/720).  I typically only have 1-2 transcodes going on at any given time, so the card more than meets my needs.

It was an extremely good upgrade for my system (Xeon E3-1271 V3) since there was no integrated (QuickSync) graphics.

It's cool to see a couple of transcodes with almost no hit to the rest of the performance of my system.

I've successfully tested up to 4 or so simultaneous transcodes without issue.  I didn't push it any further than that because I'll never go over that.  I think that it's rare I'll even get to 2 because the transcode is so fast now.  It will transcode an entire movie in a fraction of the time it used to take.

 

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

says 3 max transcode jobs which seems common limit across practially all but top end quadro's. It does seem to be driver limited and there are (at least for linux) tweaked drivers to remove this soft-limit.

 

 

[Carlo 4330]

Many of us use the UNLOCK on Windows as well.  I've had over a dozen transcodes in GPU on my 1650.
Works well with tone mapping in 4.6 as well with 4 to 6 tone mapping transcodes of 4K HDR to 1080 SDR.

[BAlGaInTl 279]

 

3 hours ago, veehexx1 said:

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

says 3 max transcode jobs which seems common limit across practially all but top end quadro's. It does seem to be driver limited and there are (at least for linux) tweaked drivers to remove this soft-limit.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, cayars said:

Many of us use the UNLOCK on Windows as well.  I've had over a dozen transcodes in GPU on my 1650.
Works well with tone mapping in 4.6 as well with 4 to 6 tone mapping transcodes of 4K HDR to 1080 SDR.

 

Yes, it's possible to do that.  I'm aware of the 3 limit.  I can confirm it can do at least 4 on Linux. 

I'm pretty sure that the 1050 and P620 use the same core. The 1050 does have more (640 vs 512 I think) cores I think.  The Quadro also has a lower TDP which is part of why I chose it for my server.  That, and you can actually find one pretty easy.