AVS › AVS Forum › Video Components › Home Theater Computers › HTPC - Linux Chat › 6 cores now! Why was I not informed??
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

6 cores now! Why was I not informed??

post #1 of 14
9/13/09 at 3:28pm
Thread Starter 
Yes, I know it's a bit overkill and pricey for just HTPC, but I'll be doing much more than that eventually. Here they are at the egg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&name=Istanbul

And here's an awesome board that can handle them: http://www.acmemicro.com/estore/merc...catid=5&step=4
Reply
Reply

AVS Top Picks

post #2 of 14
9/13/09 at 3:46pm
115 watt tdp - ouch
but I guess divide it by 6 and that is less than 20 watts per processor which isn't bad.

Boy it's pricey though at over $1200 for the board and processor. I would think you could be better off getting a dual processor board and just grabbing a couple of quad cores.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 14
9/13/09 at 3:57pm
Thread Starter 
I agree, but I want to squeeze in as much performance as possible on one board because it'll be hosting apps. I'll probably start out with dual quads for benchmarking and cost assessment and go from there. I don't know if a full-size server board would fit into that backblaze unit that tux linked to in the ext array thread, but that would be ideal.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 14
9/13/09 at 7:21pm
That Backblaze case is purpose built for them, AFAIK you can't just buy it from somewhere, unfortunately.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 14
9/13/09 at 8:16pm
man I feel like I need to get into the backblaze case business seems like there is a lot of interest. I've even got cnc equipment I could use to make my own cases
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 14
9/13/09 at 9:43pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah, the cases are custom but available. Although, I could always spec out a case and have my local metal shop crank some out, but, obviously, it would be expensive unless I was having them make several hundred or thousand of them.

The trick component here is the 5 port backplane. I'm somewhat surprised that only one company makes this (or am i wrong?).

Sorry to drift OT in my own thread. I'm still crazy happy about the possibility of having 24 cores in one box with 256GB ECC RAM.
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 14
9/13/09 at 10:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mythmaster View Post

Sorry to drift OT in my own thread. I'm still crazy happy about the possibility of having 24 cores in one box with 256GB ECC RAM.

What are you trying to build, a virtual server hosting platform or a media repository to stream movies to your whole neighbourhood ?
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 14
9/14/09 at 4:07am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

What are you trying to build, a virtual server hosting platform or a media repository to stream movies to your whole neighbourhood ?

lol, I want to do some app and maybe VM hosting. Looking into Citrix XenApp and Sun Secure Global Desktop for hosting Windows apps for SMB's seamlessly. So far, I like Sun's solution better because it runs in OpenSolaris and uses RDP so no TS licenses are required, and it's less expensive per user, but I'll need to benchmark and test both of them extensively. Ultimately, of course, I'd like to convince clients to move away from Windows, but that's going to be difficult, so I need to accommodate them in the meantime. At least this way, they can run their Windows apps from a Linux desktop.

Imagine how quick you could transcode a movie on a system like that, though.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 14
9/14/09 at 4:25am
I was involved in setting up many dozens of VMware ESX servers in a large (global) company 2 years ago, to host both Windows and Linux VMs for all sorts of applications and we only used dual quad-core Opteron cpu based systems with 8GB of RAM and that was plenty to run on average 20 VMs in it (but some up to 30).
You need much less physical resources than you think with VMs (unless all your VMs will run at 100% cpu load all the time, which is unlikely).
The 24 core, 256GB RAM beast you are planning could likely cope with 100 VMs, are you sure you need that much 'firepower'?
Especially the RAM seems oversized to me, 32-64GB would be more than enough for 24 cores.
Also you need to have a failover system, which means you would need two of these beasts...
That's why even with VMs it makes sense to have a farm of medium sized systems, with a hot-standby box.
We had farms of 12 servers with one in hot-standby each, to failover to in case of a hardware issue with one box.
Of course storage for the VMs was all on SAN not local to the boxes (otherwise failover would be impossible).
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 14
9/14/09 at 5:02am
Thread Starter 
Thanks, tux. Yes, I'm aware of the need for failovers and having the data backed up somewhere so that it is accessible to the hot-standby boxes. Redundancy is always a challenge and expensive. I will, however, require as much "firepower" as possible, so I'm quite pleased that 6-core CPU's are now available, and one can never have too much RAM. My clients might be editing professional videos. Like I said, though, I'll do benchmarking and cost assessments before I build anything this extravagant. I'm just thrilled that I have the option.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 14
9/14/09 at 12:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

What are you trying to build ..... a media repository to stream movies to your whole neighbourhood ?

I would do this in a heartbeat if it didn't mean I'd get fined like crazy. I'm already running a couple of 700mhz/900mhz p2p links with neighbors about a quarter mile away to share internet and my myth server.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 14
9/14/09 at 1:51pm
I'd be interested to know how well these 6-core CPUs run the multi-threaded build of mplayer. Especially how the H264 decoding compares to using a VDPAU-enabled NVidea card. And how if all the fancy software deinterlacing routines can run without dropping frames.
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 14
9/14/09 at 7:34pm
I kind of keep seeing the title of the thread and think that any minute AMD is going to announce 8 cores but with an aloe strip to improve shaving
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 14
10/29/09 at 7:27pm
6 cores in a AM3 package for desktop boards soon too:

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16187/1/
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: HTPC - Linux Chat

AVS Top Picks

AVS › AVS Forum › Video Components › Home Theater Computers › HTPC - Linux Chat › 6 cores now! Why was I not informed??