I am about to have need of 4K transcoding for multiple simultaneous remote streams.
The difficulty is that even though I have a Xeon E5 1650 processor, trasncoding multiple 1080p streams is a challenge.
I would like to know definitively, if I purchase a GPU (Nvidia Quadro P200) that has Intel Quick Sync, will Plex’s "Hardware acceleration utilize the GPU to transcode, even if my CPU does not have Intel Quick Sync?!
First, to clarify/answer you, to use Intel QS your CPU has to have a iGPU and supports QS, you can look it up on ark.intel.com. Most Xeons don’t have a iGPU therefor they don’t have QS. When you have an Nvidia card it doesn’t use QS it used the card’s encode/decode engine (NVENC). Correct me If I’m wrong but all semi-modern Nvidia cards will work.
So I’m in the same boat. I have an E3-1246 v3 (Passmark score of 9800) and I’m looking for an upgrade.
During peak times I see about 10 streams, usually 8-9 transcoded to 720 or SD. Most of my media is 10-15Mbps 1080p with surround. At those peak times, I see my CPU almost pegged out.
A couple things I curious about:
Hardware transcoding:
Also looking when for a new system, CPU wise, does plex care for more cores or less cores but higher clock speed? Or does it not really care, just really cares about the passmark score? Also dual CPU, how does that perform?
Thank you for responding.
So basically you’re saying I’m completely SOL because the P2000 won’t do anything for me since the Xeon processor doesn’t have QS? And “hardware acceleration” for transcoding only works if you have QS, correct??
To answer your question I got the P2000 because it does not have the “2 stream” limit that most other Nvidia cards have! It claims unlimited and from what I’ve read from plex users who use it, it’s an absolute beast!
I’m honestly wondering if it wouldn’t be worth it to just get a new mobo (with a RAID 5 controller) and a processor that has QS combined with the P2000 Quadro and just have a dream machine…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but another alternative would be to just get the people who will be streaming 4K content each an Nvidia Shield so that nothing has to be transcoded…?
Oh, cool good to know about the P2000. I wondered why it’s was so popular amoung hardware transcoding. I think that might be the answer and I need to snag one.
And to answer you back. No, you do not have to have Intel Quicksync to use hardware transcoding. Therefore you could have an AMD processor (obviously won’t have Intel Quicksync) and use the P2000 for it. There are some limitations to what OS you’re running. According to the support article if you are running Linux the Nvidia card cannot decode the video and only encode. There are lots of other limitations but it sounds like if you’re running windows with a P2000 you don’t have any limits when it comes to encoding/decoding and h265.
Again if you’re using the P2000 for acceleration you don’t need QS, in fact on windows, if you have the P2000 as your main graphics it will disable the Intel graphics and therefore disabling QS.
Oh wonderful!!!
That’s fantastic to hear. So I’m all set.
Do you know if I have to only have the P2000 connected or can I have it as well as my Titan? I’d obviously like to use the Titan for gaming and the P2000 for transcoding. Just wondering if Plex Hardware acceleration will use any and all available GPU resources, or if you can tell it which GPU to utilize?
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