I’m going to rebuild my Windows-only network, going pure Linux. My current server (headless, dual AMD quad opterons) does fine with a couple 1080p streams, but no more. I have some AMD based workstations with good GPUs and would like to recycle one to use as the new Plex server, but everything I read says to use Intel and Quick Sync. My goal is to support 4 1080p streams and 1 4K stream simultaneously. I know this is easy with the right Intel setup, but what about AMD?
It seems that Plex is heavily Intel-centric. Is this truly the case, or does Plex actually support AMD well?
Here’s a sample AMD workstation which I’d like to use for Plex:
Board: MSI 990FXA-GD80 (MS-7640)
CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.1GHz 8-core
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600
GPU: Radeon R9-270X 2GB
I cannot speak directly to your specific AMD config, but 2 years ago I tried to run AMD as my PMS and was not totally happy. The biggest problem for me was lack of hardware transcoding support.
Intel CPUs and built-in GPUs seem to have pretty good hardware transcoding support in Plex. AMD/Radeon not so much. But I have not tried again recently, so Radeon support may be better now.
Thx DrSmith, that’s kind of my impression, but I’m really hoping the Plex guys have improved their AMD support, especially with AMD retaking the lead in mainstream computing. (Which, of course, flip-flops every year, lol.)
Another alternative I’m considering is an AMD APU, the CPU+GPU processor which I believe is basically what an Intel CPU with Quick Sync. (I could be way off base there, though.)
Can you add a GPU to your server? That might fix your issues.
The GPU you list does not have HEVC hw encode decode features required (nothing to do with plex)
Linux support of nvidia transcoding has gotten a lot of attention lately and a cheap used GTX1050 with driver hack might work wonders for you.
It supports the most common codecs that you will want to transcode.
headless is sometimes an issue itself, but you can plug in an old display or use an HDMI display emulator if you run across those issues (I never have)
AMD APU (w vega for VCN 1) options will be more costly than this, at least around where I live. but some posters here have had some successes.
Its not so much as Plux doesnt support AMD as much as it is that comparitively few AMD products have these hw encoders and decoders compared to intel and nvidia. those that have them are much more recent.
Ah, so it’s not so much a matter of what Plex supports, it definitely sounds more like an issue of Intel h/w vs AMDs; namely, encoding. Historically, Intel has led with sheer number crunching, so it looks like they have a similar focus on multimedia processing, period; I can see the pattern now.
Guys, thx for the enlightenment, I really appreciate it. I’m starting to think a Black Friday Intel combo sale is on my horizon.
an 8 or 9 series i3, an inexpensive systemboard, and 4-8GB of RAM, installed on a 250GB low end SSD makes an excellent plex server if you leave your files on the NAS. 4 real cores for when you need CPU muscle, and hw transcoding for the majority of the time. I love my 8 series i3 plex server/nas
I said, it is something the team is exploring.
I also said it is something they would not be able to get to until next year.
I made no such promise of support because I do not know all the details involved.
I could be mistaken, but I thought I read somewhere that i3 processors were lacking something that i5 had that was required (or extremely beneficial) for transcoding. Or maybe that was only true with older i5’s? I think maybe it had something to do with Quick Sync?
I’m replacing my main desktop with a new Ryzen 7 3800X setup, so the current AMD FX system might be a viable PMS server if we get official AMD support in the near future, and 8x 4.1GHz cores probably isn’t too shabby for parallel transcoding streams, either (even w/o the GPU which it’d have for local viewing anyway).
@ChuckPa: How likely do you think Plex would support AMD? (Unofficial gut feeling, that is…)
While the gaming graphic performance can vary, from what I have seen intel has been extremely consistent in these media features. from a i3-7100 to a i9-9900K, they do the hw assist via qsv them same, for the items 99% of us use.
I think gen 10 intel icelake CPUs will have a significant new feature that I will want, hw tone mapping for HDR, but that is not available yet, who know if / when we get that
Not everything can be done in qsv, so more cores and faster cores always helps but, in my experience, the 8 series i3 are cheap and with quad core perform wonderfully…
Any of the Intel “Core” processors in the -7xxx family will be able to hardware transcode HEVC UHD video (HDR). This is the heaviest known processing load.
The second heaviest load is subtitle burning. This can be mitigated / managed in several ways:
Text based subtitles can almost always be handled by the player (SRT, ASS, and SSA type)
Image based (PGS, VOBSUB, DVDRIP) should be pre-burned into the video stream and made permanent if they are to be used. This is a common technique for forced foreign language subtitles (e.g. French spoken in an English audio stream)
Re AMD:
I’ve shared the status of AMD.
There is nothing new to report
There won’t be anything new to report at least until Q1/Q2 of this coming year.
I know I’m a little late to the party with this thread, but I use the same CPU in my plex server and it works great. The number of cores / threads helps greatly, even though per core its not as powerful as an Intel.
I do however have an Nvidia GPU to use for hardware transcoding. Its an old one, (GTX 550ti, I think) but it supports 264, so it works for my current devices. I’d highly recommend not using that GPU you listed.
