Adding a GTX 1050 on my QNAP TS-473 - Improved transcoding performance?

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Hey There,

i have a QNAP TS-473 with 4x 10 TB Seagate and 2x 1 TB Samsung M.2 SSD in a QTier Pool. Since my Plex Server Library grows and grows, and more Family and Friend members start to watch from my server. I asked myself if it will improve the performance if i add a 1050 Ti to my NAS.

Some say External GPUs are not supported, some say Nvidia is supported…

Can you give me a little advice here?

NAS:


GPU:

or

Thank you in advance!

2

At this time, nVidia GPU encoding is supported.
Shortly, nVidia GPU decoding will also be supported.

I can confirm, because I did the work, the TS-x77 series as well as many others do support nVidia PCI-E GPU cards if there is ample space and power for it. This support was added in PMS 1.15.0. There is one exception.

We have asked QNAP Engineering for verification but our understanding from QNAP North America is:

  1. TVS-x73 devices do not support external GPU cards. You will find it’s not listed as a feature in the specifications.
  2. TS-x73 devices do support external GPU cards.
3

Great!
Well in my Case, there is Support for external nVidia GPU. So, i think next month i will get a 1050 Ti or 1030 and try to get it working :slight_smile:

Thank you very much Mr. ChuckPA.

Regards

PS: Plex ist the best!

4

I have one of the TS X73 with the MSI GeForce GTX 1050 TI and I can confirm that it does indeed help with transcoding. I had to go into my plex app and allow hardware transcoding, but once I did that it began working! Its also worth noting that the graphics card has to be assigned to the QTS Desktop.

This was the best purchase ever because I only had to wait 4 months to get this support!

5

Great News!

Thank you very much! :):grinning:

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So Plex can realy do hardware transcoding using the ts 873 with the gtx1050? I read that the amd cpu has no gpu passthrough and it would not work.

7

I implemented the NVIDIA_GPU_DRV package; which is how QNAP interfaces to nVidia GPU cards using the nvenc interface.

There is no AMD support at this time primarily because there is no MESA support in Plex which is required for all things AMD GPU. Secondarily, I do not believe QNAP offers an AMD_GPU_DRV package.

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Correct… AFAIK QNAP currently has no plans to support AMD GPU’s at the QTS level. They are only supported (on applicable QNAP models) for GPU Passthrough in Virtualization Station.

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Plex App (downloadable from QTS store.)
The situation I’m referring to is strictly transcoding when using the plex app on QTS Desktop. If other users or myself begin streaming the Graphics card will help the processor with transcoding (If it’s not directly playable.) To make sure it worked I went to the plex app on my server and made sure hardware transcoding when possible was active. Therefore the CPU doesn’t do all the work and it’s pretty nifty. I have had 5 people streaming simultaneously with 3 hardware transcodes with minimal lags. However 4K is still iffy. Some streams it’s perfect others shuts the whole system down. I’m fine with HD 1080 so that’s what I stream.

My System:
TS-473
MSI GTX 1050TI
4 X 8 TB Seagate Iron Wolfs
1 TB 860 EVO M.2SSD
36 GB Dual Rank Crucial Ram
1 GB Fibre from AT&T

When talking VIRTUALIZATION that is correct there is no pass through so it will not work if you’re trying to improve your VMs, gaming, plex on VM or anything down that path. This is a 1 case use scenario.

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