Ghz VS Cores

[colejack 30]

Getting ready to overhaul my home lab. Current setup is a single VM host, dual E5450s @ 3Ghz, 24GB RAM, 250GB and 500GB Samsung SSDs, running ESXI and hosting my Emby VM (and several others as you can see in screenshot).

 

Trying to get away from running lab experiments on the same host as my home VMs, especially my pfSense VM. Thinking about getting a newer dual socket host with higher core count cpu's.

 

However my question is whether I should be looking for higher clock speed vs higher core count for Emby? I currently give my Emby VM 4 vcores @ 3Ghz, albeit its older 771 socket cpu.

 

What would work better for transcoding? fewer cores @ higher clocks vs more cores at lower clocks (newer cpu though)?

Also, usually no more than 1-2 1080p transcodes at a time currently.

 

 

 

Screenshot of planned lab config included for sh!ts and gigs

Edited February 16, 2016 by colejack

[colejack 30]

No input at all?

 

I know there's several other users on here with beefier setups and or running on virtual hosts.

[spootdev 56]

Eh, kinda a horse a piece.   And if you're using the "free" ESXI you can only assign 8vcores per vm anyways.  Unless they changed that in 6.x.

[colejack 30]

Eh, kinda a horse a piece.   And if you're using the "free" ESXI you can only assign 8vcores per vm anyways.  Unless they changed that in 6.x.

 

I'm using VMUG to play with clusters.

[pir8radio 1312]

I'm a fan of more cores.   I restrict ffmpeg to threads 1-16 in my setup leaving 4 open...  Helps me when i have a $hit ton of streams going, doesn't cause problems with new users hitting the emby webserver, or local gui freezes..  Probably doesn't answer your question in VM land, but my 2 cents.. since no one is chiming in lol   

Edited February 19, 2016 by pir8radio

[colejack 30]

I'm a fan of more cores.   I restrict ffmpeg to threads 1-16 in my setup leaving 4 open...  Helps me when i have a $hit ton of streams going, doesn't cause problems with new users hitting the emby webserver, or local gui freezes..  Probably doesn't answer your question in VM land, but my 2 cents.. since no one is chiming in lol   

 

Thanks for the input. I've narrowed my options down to either dual E5-2670's, 8 cores each at 2.6Ghz in a Dell r720 (the cpus are cheap, >$70 each but chassis, or build my own, is $500+)

Or dual X5650s, 6 cores each at 2.66Ghz in a Dell R710. The R710 will be much cheaper but the R720 will have more power.

 

Do you run any other servers? A 10 core E5 is a pretty beefy system for a dedicated Emby server

[pir8radio 1312]

Thanks for the input. I've narrowed my options down to either dual E5-2670's, 8 cores each at 2.6Ghz in a Dell r720 (the cpus are cheap, >$70 each but chassis, or build my own, is $500+)

Or dual X5650s, 6 cores each at 2.66Ghz in a Dell R710. The R710 will be much cheaper but the R720 will have more power.

 

Do you run any other servers? A 10 core E5 is a pretty beefy system for a dedicated Emby server

 

No, not at home...  I went beefy so i would only need one server in my place (HP DL380e Gen8)..  It does my home automation, WWW, and Emby, and some basic file storage.   But I have a few remote users, and they keep emby busy...       

Edited February 19, 2016 by pir8radio

[virtualtinker 8]

I seem to recall that ffmpg only runs 2 threads so until that's changed, you're going to get more value with higher clockspeed rather than more cores for transcoding when it comes to an Emby server VM.  If you do go that route, I'd also suggest changing in the VM settings the hyperthreading core sharing to none if you're going to have a lot of concurrent streams going.  That way, you're not double dipping on your cores from the hyperthreading since the transcoding process is so CPU intensive.  The only thing to be aware of though is if you do this, then the other VMs on your hypervisor will not get as much time on the physical CPUs so it could lead to somewhat higher ready time if you've got a high virtual to physical cpu ratio.

[pir8radio 1312]

I seem to recall that ffmpg only runs 2 threads so until that's changed, you're going to get more value with higher clockspeed rather than more cores for transcoding when it comes to an Emby server VM.  If you do go that route, I'd also suggest changing in the VM settings the hyperthreading core sharing to none if you're going to have a lot of concurrent streams going.  That way, you're not double dipping on your cores from the hyperthreading since the transcoding process is so CPU intensive.  The only thing to be aware of though is if you do this, then the other VMs on your hypervisor will not get as much time on the physical CPUs so it could lead to somewhat higher ready time if you've got a high virtual to physical cpu ratio.

 

That statement doesn't seem to be true on my windows setup ("ffmpeg only runs 2 threads")..  I just set process lasso to limit ffmpeg to 13 threads and started watching a movie in emby, below are the results, consuming 13 cpu threads... 

 

Edited February 21, 2016 by pir8radio