i7 6900K vs i7 7700k for 30 camera 2 MP to 3 MP setup

[krp70s]

Hi Guys,

I have built many 15-17 camera setups with blue iris, direct to disk 1080p @ 30 fps, and still using only 70% CPU on i7 4770k's, and they have been running almost 24/7 since Blue Iris 3 and now to Blue Iris 4, with most of the downtime due to the upgrade in between versions which took 1 hour only due to configurations for each installation. Blue Iris on Windows 10 or Windows Server 2012 R2 has been solid.

Right now I am thinking about building a server for a customer with 30+ cameras with a majority at 2 MP and a third at 3 MP.

Most of the cameras are going to be at 15 fps direct to disk. But with 30 plus cameras, I am sure that I will be hit with 100% CPU usage.

I've used Intel Quicksync on the 4770K's and have not noticed any noticeable change given my configurations. I have spoken to Ken, the person behind Blue Iris, and he said that 12 cameras seem to be the limit for the hardware acceleration until after that, you won't see much cpu usage reduction.

AMD is a waste of money, and I have tested Dual CPU Xeons from spare servers I had available to test on and they were horrible.

So I have been throwing up whether I should simply run an i7 6900K 8 core 16 thread CPU but it doesn't have quick sync and the choice is the more recent i7 7700k which has quick sync but is limited to just 4 cores and 8 threads. Yes some will say this is possible and if I run some of the cameras to just 1 MP or HD instead of 1080p I might be able to get away with it. However, the customer wants 1080p and I want to deliver with Blue Iris because it has been so solid for so long.

Network side, I do not have any problems as I have installed quad port server nic, and linked all four ports on the cisco gigabit poe switches with a 32 Gigabit backplane to run at LACP.

For Hard drives, I use a special LSI RAID Controller, to control 8 x 7200 RPM SATA3 2 Terabyte drives, and I run it in RAID 5. I have had this setup for years now on many servers and not one drive has failed even though they record 24/7. I must be lucky.

I will detail with photos of the build for the customer and more info on this thread once I am ready in the next few weeks.

Any input or advice or experience with 8 core 16 thread or 6 core 12 thread Intel CPU's would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

K

 

[looney2ns]

Will BI fill these needs?

 

[fenderman]

Hi Guys,

I have built many 15-17 camera setups with blue iris, direct to disk 1080p @ 30 fps, and still using only 70% CPU on i7 4770k's, and they have been running almost 24/7 since Blue Iris 3 and now to Blue Iris 4, with most of the downtime due to the upgrade in between versions which took 1 hour only due to configurations for each installation. Blue Iris on Windows 10 or Windows Server 2012 R2 has been solid.

Right now I am thinking about building a server for a customer with 30+ cameras with a majority at 2 MP and a third at 3 MP.

Most of the cameras are going to be at 15 fps direct to disk. But with 30 plus cameras, I am sure that I will be hit with 100% CPU usage.

I've used Intel Quicksync on the 4770K's and have not noticed any noticeable change given my configurations. I have spoken to Ken, the person behind Blue Iris, and he said that 12 cameras seem to be the limit for the hardware acceleration until after that, you won't see much cpu usage reduction.

AMD is a waste of money, and I have tested Dual CPU Xeons from spare servers I had available to test on and they were horrible.

So I have been throwing up whether I should simply run an i7 6900K 8 core 16 thread CPU but it doesn't have quick sync and the choice is the more recent i7 7700k which has quick sync but is limited to just 4 cores and 8 threads. Yes some will say this is possible and if I run some of the cameras to just 1 MP or HD instead of 1080p I might be able to get away with it. However, the customer wants 1080p and I want to deliver with Blue Iris because it has been so solid for so long.

Network side, I do not have any problems as I have installed quad port server nic, and linked all four ports on the cisco gigabit poe switches with a 32 Gigabit backplane to run at LACP.

For Hard drives, I use a special LSI RAID Controller, to control 8 x 7200 RPM SATA3 2 Terabyte drives, and I run it in RAID 5. I have had this setup for years now on many servers and not one drive has failed even though they record 24/7. I must be lucky.

I will detail with photos of the build for the customer and more info on this thread once I am ready in the next few weeks.

Any input or advice or experience with 8 core 16 thread or 6 core 12 thread Intel CPU's would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

K

First consider that you dont need 30fps unless you are running a casino...its provides zero benefit. 15 is way more than enough...your 15 camera systems at 1080p running 15fps on a 4770k will run at about 30% or so not 70. 30 cams at 1080p should run at 70. Also ensure that you enabled hardware acceleration and are not remoting in..all testing must be done with license key entered or direct to disk will not be functioning
you can likely easily use an i7-7700

 

[Tolting Colt Acres]

I have a dual Xeon R710 server I use for BI (it also serves as my household NAS) with 6 6TB drives on an PERC H800, dual X5675's (6 core 3.06ghz) and 36GB RAM. I have 14 Hikvision cameras (1 3MP varifocal and 13 4MP bullets) set to record at highest resolution. Most are set to 10fps, but a few facing the street are set to 20fps (traffic flows 40-50mph on the road and 10fps seems choppy as a vehicle travelling at 50mph is going ~74 feet per second, which, at 10 frames/second, means you're getting one image every 7.4 feet (divide that # into the # of feet your camera has view of, and you get the maximum # of pictures you'll get of a vehicle travelling in that camera's view). Direct to disk and hardware acceleration both enabled, even though the Xeons do not have quicksync. I have a discrete nVidia video card I use to feed a Samsung 4K monitor in my office at 2160p to display the BI video wall with my 14 cameras on it.

My R710 averages 40-50% CPU with ~5GB memory usage. At night it peaks about 70% because all the damn spiderwebs make the motion detection go haywire.

I built a i7-7700K system on a Gigabyte AORUS GA-Z270X-Gaming 7 Motherboard w/ 16GB of RAM in a Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full Tower Chassis case (which could handle all 6 of my drives) and connected them to the H800 with two Dell X4D23 Internal mini SAS SFF-8087 to 7-Pin SATA Cables. Reimported the VDs and restarted the system. No appreciable difference in CPU or memory utilization.

I returned the components to Amazon (thanks free Prime returns!) and decided to stick with my R710. I wrote about it in High CPU Useage on 22 Camera build system, which I inadvertently threadjacked.

 

[fenderman]

I have a dual Xeon R710 server I use for BI (it also serves as my household NAS) with 6 6TB drives on an PERC H800, dual X5675's (6 core 3.06ghz) and 36GB RAM. I have 14 Hikvision cameras (1 3MP varifocal and 13 4MP bullets) set to record at highest resolution. Most are set to 10fps, but a few facing the street are set to 20fps (traffic flows 40-50mph on the road and 10fps seems choppy as a vehicle travelling at 50mph is going ~74 feet per second, which, at 10 frames/second, means you're getting one image every 7.4 feet (divide that # into the # of feet your camera has view of, and you get the maximum # of pictures you'll get of a vehicle travelling in that camera's view). Direct to disk and hardware acceleration both enabled, even though the Xeons do not have quicksync. I have a discrete nVidia video card I use to feed a Samsung 4K monitor in my office at 2160p to display the BI video wall with my 14 cameras on it.

My R710 averages 40-50% CPU with ~5GB memory usage. At night it peaks about 70% because all the damn spiderwebs make the motion detection go haywire.

I built a i7-7700K system on a Gigabyte AORUS GA-Z270X-Gaming 7 Motherboard w/ 16GB of RAM in a Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full Tower Chassis case (which could handle all 6 of my drives) and connected them to the H800 with two Dell X4D23 Internal mini SAS SFF-8087 to 7-Pin SATA Cables. Reimported the VDs and restarted the system. No appreciable difference in CPU or memory utilization.

I returned the components to Amazon (thanks free Prime returns!) and decided to stick with my R710. I wrote about it in High CPU Useage on 22 Camera build system, which I inadvertently threadjacked.

There was something very wrong with your build.....that is not something that others should use for comparison.....r710 is a powerhog that should not be used for blue iris or any 24/7 system.

 

[Tolting Colt Acres]

*shrug* got me. I'm still running v4.5.3.2. I attribute the small increase in cpu utilization to the added overhead of the BI data partition now being 100% full, so I imagine there's some disk-related housekeeping now that didn't exist back then. Overall, no complaints.

 

[krp70s]

First consider that you dont need 30fps unless you are running a casino...its provides zero benefit. 15 is way more than enough...your 15 camera systems at 1080p running 15fps on a 4770k will run at about 30% or so not 70. 30 cams at 1080p should run at 70. Also ensure that you enabled hardware acceleration and are not remoting in..all testing must be done with license key entered or direct to disk will not be functioning
you can likely easily use an i7-7700

Hey thanks Fenderman for your help. Been reading up on all the threads and all the help you have been providing everyone. Many thanks mate. In regards to the 30 fps thing, most of the cameras I will be trying to run at 15 fps. Some of the cameras I need quick vision on, will be running a shutter speed that can pick up number plates. However, some of the cameras are used to record faces.

I'm still going to go for an i7 6900K setup as I want to test the system as it seems no one has other than Tolting (TCA) having his dual Xeon setup.

Yes I know about the Hardware acceleration and requiring an i7 that has integrated graphics, however, as I've spoken to Ken, he told me that once you go over 12 cameras anyway, you won't see much benefit of having it. Again, thank you for everything Fenderman.

I have a dual Xeon R710 server I use for BI (it also serves as my household NAS) with 6 6TB drives on an PERC H800, dual X5675's (6 core 3.06ghz) and 36GB RAM. I have 14 Hikvision cameras (1 3MP varifocal and 13 4MP bullets) set to record at highest resolution. Most are set to 10fps, but a few facing the street are set to 20fps (traffic flows 40-50mph on the road and 10fps seems choppy as a vehicle travelling at 50mph is going ~74 feet per second, which, at 10 frames/second, means you're getting one image every 7.4 feet (divide that # into the # of feet your camera has view of, and you get the maximum # of pictures you'll get of a vehicle travelling in that camera's view). Direct to disk and hardware acceleration both enabled, even though the Xeons do not have quicksync. I have a discrete nVidia video card I use to feed a Samsung 4K monitor in my office at 2160p to display the BI video wall with my 14 cameras on it.

My R710 averages 40-50% CPU with ~5GB memory usage. At night it peaks about 70% because all the damn spiderwebs make the motion detection go haywire.

I built a i7-7700K system on a Gigabyte AORUS GA-Z270X-Gaming 7 Motherboard w/ 16GB of RAM in a Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full Tower Chassis case (which could handle all 6 of my drives) and connected them to the H800 with two Dell X4D23 Internal mini SAS SFF-8087 to 7-Pin SATA Cables. Reimported the VDs and restarted the system. No appreciable difference in CPU or memory utilization.

I returned the components to Amazon (thanks free Prime returns!) and decided to stick with my R710. I wrote about it in High CPU Useage on 22 Camera build system, which I inadvertently threadjacked.

Thanks TCA, I read your post on other threads and it is the only one that contains information about someone actually having a machine with an Intel based chip that has more than 6 cores. The fact that you have 12 cores and 24 threads in your setup but you're getting mostly 40-50% at mostly 4 MP is impressive. I'm going to forego the 7700K given your experience and I'm going straight for the 6900K. It does cost more but seeing it is unchartered territory and the customer is paying for it, it should be fine.

I'll report back once complete. Again, thank you, everyone, and have a great week and weekend.

 

[Tolting Colt Acres]

Thanks TCA, I read your post on other threads and it is the only one that contains information about someone actually having a machine with an Intel based chip that has more than 6 cores. The fact that you have 12 cores and 24 threads in your setup but you're getting mostly 40-50% at mostly 4 MP is impressive. I'm going to forego the 7700K given your experience and I'm going straight for the 6900K. It does cost more but seeing it is unchartered territory and the customer is paying for it, it should be fine.

You're welcome. Of course, like Fenderman says, my setup may not be typical. I know he doesn't like my R710's power consumption but at the time it was the only way I could get the amount of storage I needed. Luckily, his feedback about things like bitrate have been a huge help... there are technical details about surveillance video I really do not understand.

For yucks today I reset the BI clip storage (I had 4TB allocated to it) to see if my CPU utilization would drop (each of my Hikvisions are set up to save on motion detection to their own 1TB NAS SMB storage share hosted on the R710, so I do not really lose anything in terms of video history).

It did. Of course at the moment there's not much movement outside, so most of the cameras are idle... but it was quite a significant drop in utilization (~20%). I attribute this to the overhead BI must incur when it is overwriting existing allocated storage, rather than simply streaming to empty storage. I'll have to check again tonight during the "drive-time rush", when there is a lot of street traffic, so there's more motion detection going on which requires BI to "think".

 

[fenderman]

Hey thanks Fenderman for your help. Been reading up on all the threads and all the help you have been providing everyone. Many thanks mate. In regards to the 30 fps thing, most of the cameras I will be trying to run at 15 fps. Some of the cameras I need quick vision on, will be running a shutter speed that can pick up number plates. However, some of the cameras are used to record faces.

I'm still going to go for an i7 6900K setup as I want to test the system as it seems no one has other than Tolting (TCA) having his dual Xeon setup.

Yes I know about the Hardware acceleration and requiring an i7 that has integrated graphics, however, as I've spoken to Ken, he told me that once you go over 12 cameras anyway, you won't see much benefit of having it. Again, thank you for everything Fenderman.




Thanks TCA, I read your post on other threads and it is the only one that contains information about someone actually having a machine with an Intel based chip that has more than 6 cores. The fact that you have 12 cores and 24 threads in your setup but you're getting mostly 40-50% at mostly 4 MP is impressive. I'm going to forego the 7700K given your experience and I'm going straight for the 6900K. It does cost more but seeing it is unchartered territory and the customer is paying for it, it should be fine.

I'll report back once complete. Again, thank you, everyone, and have a great week and weekend.

bad choice..you want something with intel hd...
12 cameras is an arbitrary number...the bitrate is the limitation..if that is the case you can use HA on a bunch of cameras and disable it once you see no improvement...
Its also important to note that there is significant improvement say from a gen2 sandy bridge processor to a kaby lake in the intel hd...so again, the 12 number makes no sense unless he provides specific parameters.