unRAID/Comskip/NVME Cache Drive Question

[KeithAbbott]

I am running the SageTV docker on unRAID. I currently use a SATA III M.2 drive as a cache drive, which has sequential read/write specs of 545/525 MBps. In addition to SATA M.2 drives, my motherboard also supports PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 drives. The Samsung 970 EVO Plus drives have sequential read/write specs of 3500/3200 MBps, which is roughly six times faster. If I were to spend the money for the Samsung drive, could I expect to see comskip times (creation of .edl files) decrease to 1/6th of what they are today? Obviously this would assume I have enough cpu horsepower to support that. Or are there other factors that would limit the speed increase?

Oops, probably should have posted this in the "SageTV v9 Customizations" area...

[Zogg]

I suspect that you would see a good speed improvement but probably not that much. I think you'll run into other bottlenecks in the system, one of which will be your cpu. It's great for a home server but isn't a high-powered cpu.

[wayner]

I think it will also depend on the complexity and CPU intensity of the compression algorithm.

For example, MPEG-2 seems to be much less CPU intensive so it is less likely to be CPU-limited and a faster SSD will likely help more than with H.264 encoded files. I have never tried this, but it would make sense.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Zogg

I suspect that you would see a good speed improvement but probably not that much. I think you'll run into other bottlenecks in the system, one of which will be your cpu. It's great for a home server but isn't a high-powered cpu.

@Zogg - I see you are from Frisco. Ever been to the National Video Game museum? I was in that area last year visiting relatives and really enjoyed that museum with my 11 year old daughter as it brought back my childhood and video games, including handhelds, that I hadn't seen in decades.