I am trying to setup hardware acceleration on my HP Microserver (N54L). I purchased a Radeon HD 7450, installed the card and the drivers and enabled the settings under server settings - but the encoding is still being done by the CPU when I look under activity > more details.
Reading the support article on hardware acceleration - it mentioned AMD CPUs are not supported - but does that just imply my CPU can’t do hardware acceleration, but the GPU in the system should still support it? Has anyone else got hardware acceleration working on a HP Microserver (with AMD CPU)?
Also if someone can point me in the right direction for the correct log files, that might help me too.
Thanks!
Forcky
Server Version#: 1.22.3.4523
Player Version#: Any (tested Chromecast, web and Android)
Windows Server 2019 version 1809.
quick update - it is Windows Server installed onto bare metal
and I am running Plex through non-sucking service manager (NSSM) as the local user. I have read in other forum posts that Plex doesn’t support hardware acceleration when run as a service? Can someone confirm?
I don’t know if this is of any help to you, but… Yes, I have hardware acceleration working on the HP Proliant Microserver N40L (AMD Turion II Neo CPU) under Windows Server 2019 (bare metal) with PMS running as a non-service local user application. NB though that I am using a Nvidia (Quadro P1000) dedicated GPU. From what I understand, AMD GPU support is in a YMMV state, so it seems probable that your problem is related to the GPU rather than CPU.
Our hardware-transcoding system has technical support for many dedicated AMD graphics cards, but we haven’t done official, full testing on those. Support for AMD GPUs is provided “as is” and your mileage may vary. (reference link)
I read in your update that you are using NSSM which I am not familiar with. Is it running PMS in session 0?(*) In general, hardware acceleration is not accessible for processes in session 0 (not sure if you are running in session 0 with your setup), but AFAIU there are some hoops Windows software can jump through to make hardware acceleration (at least for Quick Sync and NVENC) available in session 0 anyway. I have no idea if Plex is doing this, or if it is even possible for AMD GPU hardware acceleration. Since you seem to be in experimental water both because of AMD GPU and possibly because of running as a service I think it would be wise to eliminate one of those factors to narrow down the troubleshooting - ie, try running PMS in the standard way and see what result you get.
*= If you are not certain of in which session PMS is running you can check it in the Details tab in Task Manager. You may have to turn on display of the Session column.
All that said, the N54L is a (like my N40L) a very old system now. It works great for a lot of things (e.g. non-transcoding PMS), but the CPU is a severe bottleneck. Even with working hardware acceleration, expect PMS to very quickly be limited by CPU performance. And I say this after my own testing with the P1000, I don’t know of any GPU available for the N40l/N54L that would come close to it in (Plex hardware acceleration) performance.
For anyone with a Microserver N40L reading this: Even though I have Plex hardware acceleration working I don’t actually use it. Since the server still is so bottlenecked by the CPU it doesn’t really help much. Don’t plan on using hardware acceleration with Plex on the N40L because of anything I’ve written.
