Powerful system pegging at nearly 100% when streaming video??

[tech021]

Hi all. . I'm using this system in a surveillance application to monitor video from about 40 cameras which amounts to 320mbps worth of streaming video over a gigabit network.
Here are the specs of the custom built system doing the monitoring:
processor - dual xeon 2.8ghz quad core @ 97-98%
Windows 7 x64
24GB RAM - 20-30% utilization
Application used - RMS from digi IT
video card - Radeon 7970 hd video card

I've updated the video card drivers to the latest, the system was installed within the last month. Any ideas? I'm stumped and would really appreciate it.. thanks!

 

[twelve25]

40 video streams SHOULD peg a powerful system. You probably need to split that into two servers or upgrade to a higher end single system. You obviously have processing bottleneck.

Which exact Xeons do you have? There are 4 year old 2.8Ghz quad cores and new E5 ones and the performance difference is significant.

 

[blacknemesist]

This may seem stupid but are you using fast HDDs?Because you didn't mention if you are recording or not.Guessing you arent because of low ram usage.
Still just looking at the numbers 320mbps is alot of info to process,maybe try a different application that is better optimized for that type of work?

 

[twelve25]

98% CPU utilization is definitely a CPU bottleneck. If it was I/O, usually you have like 30% CPU but everything is moving at turtle speed.

 

[tech021]

Thanks a lot for the replies!
Here's some more info to answer questions:
The OS HDD is a 60GB SSD and the data drive is a WD Green drive
CPU is a XEON, I think it's a version or so back from the newest, I have one of my colleagues looking for this info as I'm not in front of the system at the moment (in another state). I logged in and pulled a Belarc though. .

INTEL SSDSC2CT060A3 [Hard drive] (60.02 GB) -- drive 0, s/n CVMP213601TS060AGN, rev 300i, SMART Status: Healthy
Kingston DT 101 G2 USB Device [Hard drive] (15.60 GB) -- drive 2
WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0 [Hard drive] (2000.40 GB) -- drive 1, s/n WD-WCAZAF824551, rev 51.0AB51, SMART Status: Healthy



2.13 gigahertz Intel Xeon (2 installed)
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache
8192 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (8 total)
Not hyper-threaded


Memory 24GB
24568 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM_A1' has 4096 MB
Slot 'DIMM_B1' has 4096 MB
Slot 'DIMM_C1' has 4096 MB
Slot 'DIMM_D1' has 4096 MB
Slot 'DIMM_E1' has 4096 MB
Slot 'DIMM_F1' has 4096 MB (serial number SerNum6)


Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. Z8NA-D6(C) Rev 1.xxG
Serial Number: 120902201300079
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 1303 05/10/2012

Intel(R) ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller

AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series [Display adapter]

Some more background:
We may try H.264 but H.264 = less bandwidth, more processing however and would probably mean more servers and therefor more $.
The app we're using to view (recording being done by other servers, viewing only on this system) only supports 64 cameras at a time (3 video servers, there are 6 total, each server sending 30mbps for total of 180mbps)
There will actually be about 124 cameras total that in the end need to be watched, but as of now watching just 40 kills the CPU, and increasing to 60 is definitely not happening.
So we need to run two instances of the view app, but running just one is like DOSing ourselves.

Looks like a self-DOS'ing until we can get at least one other system configured! Thanks a lot for your help. I will follow up when we get a solution in place.

 

[rgd1101]

what kind of resolution? and Codec ?

So it about 20% per core for each video 40/2 socket/4 core. Which OS? What else is running on it?