PC based DVR minimum system requirements for 2x 1080P cams??

I recently purchased my first 1080P camera and am considering another. Does anyone have any basic specifications for running two 1080P cams at 10FPS or so?

I was running 1st gen Core i3 370M laptop as my DVR for a while with much lesser cams but have now experienced issues with the 1080P camera. The video stream looks great when I view it in the software that came with the camera but full of artifacts and such when using iSpy. I tried it on several other computers including a Sandy Bridge i7 quad core laptop and a crappy AMD E-300 APU laptop. Neither one was much different although the CPU use was about pegged on the E-300 unit (these things are a joke). The E-300 is in what I call a disposable Wal-Mart laptop that someone gave me and I decided to see if it would work.

I am beginning to suspect buggy software or a configuration error by me as the i7 wasn't much better. I have tried VLC and ffmpeg with slightly different results. Anyone have any suggestions?

I am seeing requirements all across the spectrum online. I am wondering if I need to turn off ALL power saving features of the laptop and let the cpu run at 100% all the time.

I also see that GPU is quite important for 1080P so am wondering if the 1st gen Core i3 370M with relatively basic onboard intel HD graphics is just not quite enough. I am going to experiment some more with the i7 Sandy Bridge as the onboard graphics are much better than ever before on an Intel platform.

It looks like a much lesser CPU will decode 1080p without issues but that a better unit is required to encode or stream as in DVR use??? Is this correct?

Can you tell your camera is the type of HD-SDI or ip Camera?

The camera is an IP camera. The maker is ANRAN and the model is AR-N4PW-IP if that matters. I am pretty sure I have the situation under control and it isn't because my hardware was lacking. I installed the trial version of Blue Iris and all my problems went away. iSpy was the problem. I have plenty of CPU cycles left for another camera or two in the old Core i3.

Conor

I was running 6 cameras with BlueIris on an old i3-540. CPU was maybe 60% with 80% spikes. Used direct to disc mode, cranked frame rates down to 10-15 and minimized the window to keep CPU down. It's good for a small system. Easy to use and works.