Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Users

PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge

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simon.paterson.nz at gmail

Apr 2, 2012, 3:40 AM

Post #1 of 10 (770 views)
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PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge

Hi,

I'm planning to build a new 'home server', sandy bridge / i3 based,
which will, among other things, be the master BE. I plan to reuse my
existing Hauppauge PCI dvb cards, a Nova-T-500 and a NOVA-S-Plus in it.

Doing some research beforehand, it seems that PCI on sandy bridge has
some issues, due to PCI support being implemented via external PCI-e to
PCI bridge chips, rather than PCI being native to the chipset like
earlier generations.

I haven't found any mention on this list of any problems, or specific
mention anywhere else of problems with Hauppauge dvb cards, so I'm
asking here if anyone here is using PCI capture cards with a sandy
bridge mother-board, and if any problems have been experienced doing so.

Cheers,
Simon

jelte.veldstra at gmail

Apr 2, 2012, 5:24 AM

Post #2 of 10 (756 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

> I haven't found any mention on this list of any problems, or specific
> mention anywhere else of problems with Hauppauge dvb cards, so I'm asking
> here if anyone here is using PCI capture cards with a sandy bridge
> mother-board, and if any problems have been experienced doing so.
>

I have tried a similar thing on a SuperMicro X9SCA-F motherboard with
a Xeon E3-1220L CPU (~ 25W idle powerdraw with 2 DIMMs and a laptop
SATA harddisk). The gotcha with this setup was that that board is
equipped with 3.3V PCI slots. Until then I never realised there were
different versions of 32bit PCI slots. Now I do as my DVB-C card was a
5V one! I solved it using a PCI-e 1x to 32bit PCI converter. The VT-d
passthrough worked fine and a CentOS 6.2 virtual machine could access
the DVB-C tuner (KNC-1). I only did a handful of recordings and no
extensive testing and it seemed to work alright. I did not try more
with it as adding more tuners this way would require more PCI-e to PCI
adapters, which would not be very cost effective in my situation, plus
the box was purchased as a ESXi testlab and not a 24/7 host for MythTV
"production".
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jim.oltman at gmail

Apr 2, 2012, 7:06 AM

Post #3 of 10 (752 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Jelte Veldstra <jelte.veldstra [at] gmail>wrote:

> > I haven't found any mention on this list of any problems, or specific
> > mention anywhere else of problems with Hauppauge dvb cards, so I'm asking
> > here if anyone here is using PCI capture cards with a sandy bridge
> > mother-board, and if any problems have been experienced doing so.
> >
>
> I have tried a similar thing on a SuperMicro X9SCA-F motherboard with
> a Xeon E3-1220L CPU (~ 25W idle powerdraw with 2 DIMMs and a laptop
> SATA harddisk). The gotcha with this setup was that that board is
> equipped with 3.3V PCI slots. Until then I never realised there were
> different versions of 32bit PCI slots. Now I do as my DVB-C card was a
> 5V one! I solved it using a PCI-e 1x to 32bit PCI converter. The VT-d
> passthrough worked fine and a CentOS 6.2 virtual machine could access
> the DVB-C tuner (KNC-1). I only did a handful of recordings and no
> extensive testing and it seemed to work alright. I did not try more
> with it as adding more tuners this way would require more PCI-e to PCI
> adapters, which would not be very cost effective in my situation, plus
> the box was purchased as a ESXi testlab and not a 24/7 host for MythTV
> "production".
>

What about something like this:

http://www.arstech.com/item-SSI2-PCI-3-connector-card-ssi2_pci_x3.html

mikep at randomtraveller

Apr 2, 2012, 8:06 AM

Post #4 of 10 (752 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

On 02/04/12 15:06, Jim Oltman wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Jelte Veldstra<jelte.veldstra [at] gmail>wrote:
>
>>> I haven't found any mention on this list of any problems, or specific
>>> mention anywhere else of problems with Hauppauge dvb cards, so I'm asking
>>> here if anyone here is using PCI capture cards with a sandy bridge
>>> mother-board, and if any problems have been experienced doing so.
>>>
>>
>> I have tried a similar thing on a SuperMicro X9SCA-F motherboard with
>> a Xeon E3-1220L CPU (~ 25W idle powerdraw with 2 DIMMs and a laptop
>> SATA harddisk). The gotcha with this setup was that that board is
>> equipped with 3.3V PCI slots. Until then I never realised there were
>> different versions of 32bit PCI slots. Now I do as my DVB-C card was a
>> 5V one! I solved it using a PCI-e 1x to 32bit PCI converter. The VT-d
>> passthrough worked fine and a CentOS 6.2 virtual machine could access
>> the DVB-C tuner (KNC-1). I only did a handful of recordings and no
>> extensive testing and it seemed to work alright. I did not try more
>> with it as adding more tuners this way would require more PCI-e to PCI
>> adapters, which would not be very cost effective in my situation, plus
>> the box was purchased as a ESXi testlab and not a 24/7 host for MythTV
>> "production".
>>
>
> What about something like this:
>
> http://www.arstech.com/item-SSI2-PCI-3-connector-card-ssi2_pci_x3.html
>
That's an impressive product if it does what it says...

I note there are two cable lengths to connect this card to the host adaptor -
three feet and fifteen feet! Some mistake, surely?

--

Mike Perkins

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raymond at wagnerrp

Apr 2, 2012, 8:19 AM

Post #5 of 10 (754 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

On 4/2/2012 11:06, Mike Perkins wrote:
> three feet and fifteen feet! Some mistake, surely?

It says it connects through USB, and the length limit of USB is 16 feet,
however the concept of pushing PCI over USB is itself pretty absurd.
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charriglists at bellsouth

Apr 2, 2012, 8:41 AM

Post #6 of 10 (746 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

On 4/2/2012 11:19 AM, Raymond Wagner wrote:
> On 4/2/2012 11:06, Mike Perkins wrote:
>> three feet and fifteen feet! Some mistake, surely?
>
> It says it connects through USB, and the length limit of USB is 16 feet,
> however the concept of pushing PCI over USB is itself pretty absurd.
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

Might not be the best match, but not absurd. PCI theoretically maxes out
at 132MB/sec (32 bits <4 bytes> x 33 Mhz). USB 2.0 is 480 Mb/sec So
forgetting about overhead etc., that's about 60 MB/s (480/8). Low, but
not too bad either. There will be other issues, like latency, high cpu
overhead, port read/write timings, memory mapping, etc, but still doable
in most cases. I definitely wouldn't put it into a production
environment. :-D
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raymond at wagnerrp

Apr 2, 2012, 8:45 AM

Post #7 of 10 (748 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

On 4/2/2012 11:41, Calvin Harrigan wrote:
> There will be other issues, like latency, high cpu overhead, port
> read/write timings, memory mapping, etc

Those are the ones I'm referring to, not the bandwidth issues, which
really aren't an issue for a digital tuner or MPEG encoder.
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simon.paterson.nz at gmail

Apr 3, 2012, 12:10 AM

Post #8 of 10 (750 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

> What about something like this:
>
> http://www.arstech.com/item-SSI2-PCI-3-connector-card-ssi2_pci_x3.html
>
>
To clarify, I'm talking about the on-board PCI slots on the motherboard,
not an add-on PCI-over-something adapter.

For example, the below board, which is one I was looking at, is a
sandybridge H67 chipset board, with 3 onboard PCI slots.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-dh67cl.html

The 'consumer' sandy-bridge chipsets H61/H67/P67/Z68 do not have PCI
'built in', only PCIe, so those 3 PCI slots on this board are driven by
an ITE8892E PCIe-to-PCI bridge chip, which is fed from one of the PCIEx1
lanes out of the H67 PCH.

Same story with any board with the aforementioned sandy-bridge chipsets,
with Gigabyte also seeming to use the ITE8892E, Asus using the ASM1083,
and other mobo vendors seeming to use one of these two bridge chips.

I haven't found any one good summary of this issue online to point to,
but a search for 'sandy bridge pci' , over half the first page results
are about this issue. It seems like it is more noticed by users of high
end audio cards, and some specialized interface cards. It basically
seems like the PCI slots driven by these bridge chips are not up to the
same 'performance / standard' as earlier chipsets.

So, the intent of my original question is to figure if this is an issue,
or a non-issue for PCI capture cards, on these motherboards. The fact
that I have found few references online of capture card woes with
sandy-bridge seems positive, but I was just wanting to make sure.
Forewarned is forearmed, etc, etc.

So, is anybody is happily (or unhappily) using PCI capture cards on a
Intel H61/H67/P67/Z68 based (sandy-bridge) motherboard?

Cheers,
Simon

tortise at paradise

Apr 3, 2012, 3:55 AM

Post #9 of 10 (728 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

On 3/04/2012 7:10 p.m., Simon Paterson wrote:

> So, is anybody is happily (or unhappily) using PCI capture cards on a
> Intel H61/H67/P67/Z68 based (sandy-bridge) motherboard?

I am going to run up a Z68 motherboard (already purchased) in the coming
weeks with 2 x TD-500's so if you want to wait I intend to find out...!

FWIW its a http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3853#ov
and I was not expecting an issue however there are no rules here and all
sorts of unexpected's can conspire against us (such as nvidia vdpau
drivers not obviously not being fully compatible with all motherboard
chipsets...)

With the PCI bus speed circa 100 cf streams of maybe 2 to 10 there would
need to be a lot of concurrent streams to challenge the bus capacity. Or
is the issue to be found somewhere else?

Given its a back end with graphics capability (Intel 2000/3000) I am
expecting a little bit of a power saving as I won't need to concurrently
run a 50W nvidia card in the same box, while there should be enough CPU
to play HD if I want to for testing purposes.
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gallatin at cs

Apr 3, 2012, 6:31 AM

Post #10 of 10 (724 views)
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Re: PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge [In reply to]

On 04/03/12 03:10, Simon Paterson wrote:

> So, is anybody is happily (or unhappily) using PCI capture cards on a
> Intel H61/H67/P67/Z68 based (sandy-bridge) motherboard?

I've got a Supermicro X9SCA-F-O
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182255).
The board has 3 PCI slots, but I'm down to just one PCI tuner,
a Pinnacle 800i, which works just fine.

BTW, this is a "server grade" sandy bridge motherboard with 3 PCI slots.
I'm using this rather than a consumer grade box because, well, I feel
naked without ECC and this machine does many other things.

Drew
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