This question has to do with streaming from a PC to a media player. However I believe the issue is in the PC and my question relates to PC's so I have chosen to post it here.
Does anyone know of a reason why one particular mother board or NIC would not be able to stream as well as another? If so, what mother boards / NIC's work well and which ones don't?
Here is the background to this question:
I have a new media player which in general is working fine. I do have a very minor issue wiht speed when trying to stream a full bitrate blue ray file from the PC which is done via SMB shares. I am told I need to get read speeds of 8 MB/s for a full bit rate blue ray to work. Right now I'm getting speeds of 6.2 - 7.7 measured by the player. The speed can be pretty eratic and different every time you run a test.
The PC has a Biostar board, with an AMD Athalon II 3.0Ghz. Integrated Realtek NIC and 4 GB DDR2 800 RAM. Not the heaviest of setups but it's only being used as a file server.
I also have a 2nd PC with a Gigbyte board, Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0 Ghz, integrated Realtek NIC, and 4 GB DDR 2 800 RAM.
Both streamed at the same speeds more or less. I think the Gigabyte / Intel box was more consitantly in the 7's but thats really subjective considering Ive got far lest testing on it.
I also have a D-Link PCI NIC with a Broadcom chipset. Tried it in both, with no measurable difference.
The network is wired and made up of two consumer grade D-Link 5 port Gb swtiches. Not the best but I routinely copy files from PC to PC at 90-100 MB/s.
I tried running a temp cable from room to room and took one of the two swtiches out (no change), just used the 100Mb swtich in the router (worse in the 5's), and went directly to the back of the server with hardcoded IP's (worse in the 5's).
I understand this media player gets stable speeds in the 9 -10 M/s range streaming off a Win 7 box that had an Intel board with an Intel integrated NIC.
It seems I have 3 possible issues:
1. Bad player - This is my least favorite. The chances of having a hardware issue that means it works, but only runs a little slow doesnt seem very likely. I can send the player back to be tested but dont really want to be wihtout it for a couple weeks as I really dont think thats the issue.
2. NIC - I could buy an Intel chipset NIC for about $35 and try it in a PCI or PCI express slot. However, how likely is this? Both Realtek and Broadcom are slow but somehow Intel has it figured out? $35 would be a cheap fix but I've thrown away $25 on the D Link already. If there was any confidence it's a NIC issue though I woudl go for it.
3. Motherboard / bus issue - Before I tried the Gigabyte board I was leaninig this direction. The Biostar board is cheap. I believe SMB has a lot of overhead associated with it so it made sense in a way that the board just was having issues. However, the Gigabyte board is sort of middle of the road and didnt perform any better. If it turns out this is the issue I will probably wait a bit to fix this as I would buy a better board this time around.
If anyone has any experience or insight into ths problem it would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks!
Does anyone know of a reason why one particular mother board or NIC would not be able to stream as well as another? If so, what mother boards / NIC's work well and which ones don't?
Here is the background to this question:
I have a new media player which in general is working fine. I do have a very minor issue wiht speed when trying to stream a full bitrate blue ray file from the PC which is done via SMB shares. I am told I need to get read speeds of 8 MB/s for a full bit rate blue ray to work. Right now I'm getting speeds of 6.2 - 7.7 measured by the player. The speed can be pretty eratic and different every time you run a test.
The PC has a Biostar board, with an AMD Athalon II 3.0Ghz. Integrated Realtek NIC and 4 GB DDR2 800 RAM. Not the heaviest of setups but it's only being used as a file server.
I also have a 2nd PC with a Gigbyte board, Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0 Ghz, integrated Realtek NIC, and 4 GB DDR 2 800 RAM.
Both streamed at the same speeds more or less. I think the Gigabyte / Intel box was more consitantly in the 7's but thats really subjective considering Ive got far lest testing on it.
I also have a D-Link PCI NIC with a Broadcom chipset. Tried it in both, with no measurable difference.
The network is wired and made up of two consumer grade D-Link 5 port Gb swtiches. Not the best but I routinely copy files from PC to PC at 90-100 MB/s.
I tried running a temp cable from room to room and took one of the two swtiches out (no change), just used the 100Mb swtich in the router (worse in the 5's), and went directly to the back of the server with hardcoded IP's (worse in the 5's).
I understand this media player gets stable speeds in the 9 -10 M/s range streaming off a Win 7 box that had an Intel board with an Intel integrated NIC.
It seems I have 3 possible issues:
1. Bad player - This is my least favorite. The chances of having a hardware issue that means it works, but only runs a little slow doesnt seem very likely. I can send the player back to be tested but dont really want to be wihtout it for a couple weeks as I really dont think thats the issue.
2. NIC - I could buy an Intel chipset NIC for about $35 and try it in a PCI or PCI express slot. However, how likely is this? Both Realtek and Broadcom are slow but somehow Intel has it figured out? $35 would be a cheap fix but I've thrown away $25 on the D Link already. If there was any confidence it's a NIC issue though I woudl go for it.
3. Motherboard / bus issue - Before I tried the Gigabyte board I was leaninig this direction. The Biostar board is cheap. I believe SMB has a lot of overhead associated with it so it made sense in a way that the board just was having issues. However, the Gigabyte board is sort of middle of the road and didnt perform any better. If it turns out this is the issue I will probably wait a bit to fix this as I would buy a better board this time around.
If anyone has any experience or insight into ths problem it would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks!
