So, I’d love to pick up a supported video card to take advantage of the new HW trancoding in PMS. Can anyone suggest a good, reasonably priced model? My current card seems to support it but it’s VERY old and I think I would like one that could handle multiple streams, etc.
So! Any suggestions? (I am on windows if that helps).
I have an i7-920 which has got to be 8 years old now. My RX480 is about a year old and I get about (4) 1080 streams at 20% CPU load. I don’t hear the fan on my GPU to it’s unclear to me how loaded it is. The 5th stream is when I start seeing client messages about server limits and tiling appears. CPU sticks at 20%
This could be me hitting the bus limit of PCIE, it’s a very old standard, maybe 2.0.
I am curious to hear what others are able to pull off with modern hardware. With the capability to transcode (4) streams, plus (4) direct plays all while only 20% CPU load, I am sitting pretty. No more lawn mower sounds from my CPU fan.
My GPU is ANCIENT so I’d be looking for anything, ideally something on the cheaper side, that would help. It’ll mean I don’t have to upgrade my CPU for a while. 
I would be willing to consider ebay. I think at the point the GPU I’m using is only transcoding the decode and not the encode as I only have (hw) on one side of the image in the status.
Gotcha. Mine is (hw) on both. I think the current issue with the GPU wars is that many of the value cards are being horded for bit coin mining. It’s driving up the prices on everything including eBay. I think I paid about $200 for my card and it’s insane. I get 120fps on Doom (max settings) on an 8 year old processor.
Let’s put it this way. You’ll want a last Gen card so that it supports acceleration for things like HEVC 10 bits.
Nvidia consumer cards can only accelerate 2 streams at once, while AMD cards have no hard limit.
So an RX460 would probably be a great low cost option.
THAT SAID I would suggest you upgrade to a Kaby lake or newer Intel cpu, because 1. You’ll probably get a boost for software transcoding 2. The integrated GPUs have quicksync that supports HEVC 10bit.
Depending what you run things on right now, even the cheap pentium G4560 might be a good option because of its nice iGPU.
Personally I run things on an i5-7500 with the iGPU only and things are great.
Adding to KarlDag’s post,
It will be a number of months before additional support for discrete (off-CPU) GPUs is added with Windows doing its own thing as it always does but Linux being entirely gated by the release of VAAPI 2.0
Thanks for the answers everyone! This is all something to consider.
Many here are I think IT professionals, but I’m not. Much of the lingo above was greek to me. I have a six core AMD processor.
If I add a graphics cards can I take advantage of hardware transcoding and get less buffering and so on? Or do you pretty much have to have an Intel system.
Thanks for any help.
@brucethevideobug said:
If I add a graphics cards can I take advantage of hardware transcoding and get less buffering and so on?
Yes, you can. Just stay away from Nvidia and buy one that is as new as possible (such as the example above - RX460)
How would a Vega 64 vs a GTX 1080 compare with 4k video streaming for plex? That is which is better? I currently have a I7 6800K for a CPU.
@rdoubble said:
How would a Vega 64 vs a GTX 1080 compare with 4k video streaming for plex? That is which is better? I currently have a I7 6800K for a CPU.
Well, it’s been posted twice already to stay away from Nvidia, and we even said why. From there, well, sure, get a 1080 I guess. Makes sense.
Wasn’t it you trying to tell folks about nVidia’s only 2 concurrent streams ? >:)
@ChuckPA no, t’was Peter 
Ok, Thanks. My Bad!
@KarlDag said:
@rdoubble said:
How would a Vega 64 vs a GTX 1080 compare with 4k video streaming for plex? That is which is better? I currently have a I7 6800K for a CPU.Well, it’s been posted twice already to stay away from Nvidia, and we even said why. From there, well, sure, get a 1080 I guess. Makes sense.
I already have a pc I built a few month back with a 1080 in it. I want a better streaming system so I am trying to figure out if its worth the switch to vega. Sorry to waste your time.
@rdoubble said:
@KarlDag said:
@rdoubble said:
How would a Vega 64 vs a GTX 1080 compare with 4k video streaming for plex? That is which is better? I currently have a I7 6800K for a CPU.Well, it’s been posted twice already to stay away from Nvidia, and we even said why. From there, well, sure, get a 1080 I guess. Makes sense.
I already have a pc I built a few month back with a 1080 in it. I want a better streaming system so I am trying to figure out if its worth the switch to vega. Sorry to waste your time.
Then don’t switch. You already have a great video card and probably a powerful cpu, no need.
