Xeon to Replace i3 on Supermicro Board

Originally Posted by stepmback 

I have a WHS 2011 box that I built about 7 months ago with 8GB of RAM and a i3 processor. I have no complaints about the box except I suscept that my CPU is not up to snuff. When I built the box I did not intend to do lots of transcoding of files, but that has changed. I find myself using Plex more and more and really like it. However with my current setup I notice stutters and buffering quite often when transcoding. My CPU usage spikes to 75-85%. If i play the file from my network share and no transcoding needed, it plays fine. I have checked and it is not my network (wired or wireless). I get consistant speeds much higher (streaming uncompressed files) with no issue wirelessly. It only occurs when transcoding.

I currently have a Supermicro board SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O board (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253) running an Intel Core i3-2120T Sandy Bridge (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115094). I am considering replacing the CPU with a XEON something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286

A couple of questions:
1. Any issue with using this XEON chip with my board?
2. How good is this chip at transcoding 1080p bluray rips in MKV to 1080p files to play on a Roku or iPad or workstation? Could it handle 2-3 transcoding at the same time?
3. Any other issues you can foresee with my approach?

Originally Posted by stepmback 

I have a WHS 2011 box that I built about 7 months ago with 8GB of RAM and a i3 processor. I have no complaints about the box except I suscept that my CPU is not up to snuff. When I built the box I did not intend to do lots of transcoding of files, but that has changed. I find myself using Plex more and more and really like it. However with my current setup I notice stutters and buffering quite often when transcoding. My CPU usage spikes to 75-85%. If i play the file from my network share and no transcoding needed, it plays fine. I have checked and it is not my network (wired or wireless). I get consistant speeds much higher (streaming uncompressed files) with no issue wirelessly. It only occurs when transcoding.

I currently have a Supermicro board SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O board (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253) running an Intel Core i3-2120T Sandy Bridge (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115094). I am considering replacing the CPU with a XEON something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286

A couple of questions:
1. Any issue with using this XEON chip with my board?
2. How good is this chip at transcoding 1080p bluray rips in MKV to 1080p files to play on a Roku or iPad or workstation? Could it handle 2-3 transcoding at the same time?
3. Any other issues you can foresee with my approach?

Originally Posted by Tong Chia 

Your current CPU is at its limits given the CPU load you reported, the E3-1230 you selected will improve matters, I suggest consider offloading some of this onto the GPU as the CPU will not scale all that well given the small number of CPU cores in the E3. Increasing the number of cores can get very expensive very quickly. The 6 core E5 Xeons are above $500 plus a new motherboard.

The other option is to do single pass transcoding and use a fixed bitrate, to reduce the amount of work the encoder has to undertake. There is a penalty in the picture quality, this is something you have to experiment with.

Originally Posted by lockdown571 

Plex currently cannot use GPU-based transcoding. Btw, I don't know much about the Xenon's but I just upgraded from an Q8400 to an i5-3570K, and PMS can now transcode three uncompressed blu-rays on the fly at 80-85% CPU. This is under Mac OSX though.

Originally Posted by Tong Chia 

The internals of the Xeon E3 are very similar to the i5. 3 streams @85% load via CPU is about the limit currently on the desktop quad i5/E3 CPUs

The one I was thinking about was Handbrake with OpenCL, I am hoping this is the direction things will go but it still not quite ready for primetime

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5835/testing-opencl-accelerated-handbrakex264-with-amds-trinity-apu

Get it here. It is experimental,so use it accordingly.
https://build.handbrake.fr/view/OpenCL/

Originally Posted by TType85 

E3-12xx are the i7's with ecc support. 4 cores 8 threads (hyper-threading). i5's are 4 cores 4 threads (no hyper threading). In theory it should handle more than the i5's would.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/53427,65732

big jump in processing power between the two CPU's

Also, the board the OP has will handle the E3-12xx V2 cpu's with the most recent bios, no need for a new board.

Originally Posted by TType85 

I'll have to set up a test on my i5 2500k vs my i7 3770 to see apples to apples.

The difference between the i3 2xxxT and the E3 is huge.

Originally Posted by stepmback 

I really like my motherboard so I am only interested in upgrading the chip. I see that they are selling several quad core E3 chips on Newegg. Will I see any appreciable difference in performance for transcoding if I bought a faster E3 than say the Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008494+600126647&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=727&description=&hisInDesc=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=

Originally Posted by stepmback 

I really like my motherboard so I am only interested in upgrading the chip. I see that they are selling several quad core E3 chips on Newegg. Will I see any appreciable difference in performance for transcoding if I bought a faster E3 than say the Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008494+600126647&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=727&description=&hisInDesc=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=

Originally Posted by stepmback 

I went ahead and bought it. I am pretty sure I am using the old bios. Do I have to upgrade? If I do, can you point me to the correct bios along with instruction.. Assume I will use a USB stick to upgrade.

I hate upgrading bios on servers. I have had bad luck in the past.

Originally Posted by stepmback 

I got the new chip in yesterday and replaced it. All look good. My load on the CPU for converting files went from 75% to 10%. I still need to do some testing but this appears to have resolved my issue with buffering on my network for workstations.