I paid for a plex pass yesterday only to discover the hw acceleration option still isnt available with the pass (tried restarting pc, plex media server, etc already).
My CPU meets the requirements, and is an Intel Sandybridge i5 2400 with 8GB 1866mhz RAM running at 1333mhz, on a mobo taken from a dell optiplex 390. The graphics card I want to use hw acceleration with is an MSI AMD R7870 Hawk
Latest drivers are installed for all components.
I have no idea what else to try
I’d appreciate any help on this topic. I literally only purchased a plex pass for this feature, only to find out its not working, plus I contacted support already, they basically refused to refund me and politely pointed me to the forums, hence this post
Thank you for your time
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Core i5 2300, 8GB RAM, 8TB windows 10 storage pool, AMD HD 7870 GPU
Also running: XAMPP bundle, Unified remote server, iSpy, Deluge bittorrent client, VPN software
Server Version#: Version 1.19.4.2935
Player Version#: Playing via Web App
Thats a shame that Plex think a 7870 is an old card if thats the case. Im unable (unwilling lol) to remove the card, since i have all my cameras recording on there, and using the GPU for hw acceleration. The cameras dont run well without the graphics card.
I hope thats not the case though. 7870 is a pretty decent card
PS. The system has the internal graphics disabled in the bios, and is set to default to PEG, the graphics card, by default. Latest bios version installed for the optiplex 390 mobo
If still not working then reply to the existing billing ticket again and tell them you could not get it work and ask for a refund again. If you just got the PP I don’t see them having a problem with it.
thank you, i will try that. disappointing i couldnt get it to work though. hopefully a developer could chime in and let us know what exactly causes the ‘hw acceleration’ option to not show up.
(i also find it pretty disappointing that plex pass doesn’t grant you access to priority support, or to talk with a developer or anything like that - its pretty unprofessional referring your users to a forum to be honest. plex loves money more than their customers i guess)
edit: server is already running the latest stable amd drivers & software for the 7870
So, with it seems like it might be supported for Plex hardware accelerated transcoding after all.
You may still have to either (a) reboot your Plex server or (b) sign out / sign in (server settings -> general) to have the server pick up that you’ve a Plex Pass. The sign out / sign in unclaims / re-claims your server. All your settings remain intact. You may see a “cannot access securely” message when you sign in again. I just tested on my server and everything came back OK.
Apologies for the run-around on this. Telling which AMD cards are supported is not as easy as with Nvidia. Nvidia is easy. You look at the NVENC/NVDEC matrix. Unfortunately, no such page exists for AMD GPUs (that I can find, anyway).
You must enable this. Otherwise the QuickSync feature is not available.
However, you don’t need to make it the primary graphics adapter.
And you must install the driver software for this too.
Keep in mind that this CPU is relatively old. So that applies to the QuickSync hardware as well. You won’t be able to use it to transcode HEVC videos Intel Quick Sync Video - Wikipedia
Thank you for your suggestions - they’re really appreciated! I’m due to try them out tonight, starting with a reboot which I should have done myself lol.
Its disappointing if plex only support hw acceleration with quicksync. I don’t really want plex to use my internal graphics, i’d rather it use my GPU.
The 7870 works really well with converting video and seems to work even better than my newer rx 580 at stuff like that for my IP cameras at least (which is strange). That’s why I want to use it so badly. I want to maximise the use of this GPU, which is why I bought the plex pass to take advantage of hardware acceleration - not with my intel internal graphics, but with my PCI-E graphics card.
Unless you mean, if I enable the internal graphics option, plex would start being able to use my AMD 7870 for hw acceleration?
Would it be possible to ask a developer to add in support for AMD graphics cards, specifically the HD 7870 & related cards? Many free apps support amd hw acceleration (‘use GPU’). I don’t see why plex as a paid service can’t do the same thing
Would really appreciate if any team/staff member could forward the above to a developer. I have the feeling this could be a bug, unless it works for others running a AMD HD 7xxx card of course.
Ah. Now the hw acceleration option shows up, and is enabled - but plex transcoder is still using the CPU and not GPU - tried streaming a video & the transcoder is still using a lot of CPU and zero GPU checked via the task manager. no plex related apps are using the gpu. I’ve tried restarting plex media server and the actual server aswell.
disappointing :(.
(next step would be to try enabling internal graphics in the bios. the graphics card output doesn’t usually display when that’s enabled, but ive since updated the bios, so will try again and hopefully it works. but yeah, if it uses quicksync im probably better off not using it i think as I have a sandybridge cpu.)
i havent actually rebooted the server yet i dont think, I will try that and will let you know if it works. fingers crossed!
