Contemplating upgrading to a life time Plex pass but would like to know if my spec laptop supports hardware transcoding… Its used as a Plex server running Centos7
DELL XP 14z
Intel i7 2640M with Intel HD3000 graphics
Hope someone can help.
Thanks.
That’s a “Sandy Bridge” CPU, introduced in 2011(!)
So all it has in regard to hardware transcoding support is decoding H.264, VC-1 and MPEG2.
But this hardware support is not usable in Plex, without a Plex Pass.
All it can do as such are ~ 2 concurrent transcodes of ‘medium’-to-‘low’-bitrate H.264 videos.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2640M+%40+2.80GHz&id=876
This machine will only satisfy low demands.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/
Thank you for your reply and I have purchased a Plex Pass now 
Reading through the linked material I might just scrap by with this laptop spec, I will only ever be having one stream to a device which will be a Roku Streaming stick.
So I have my laptop reinstalled with Win7-64bit Pro and all drivers installed.
Intel HD3000 is on driver version 15.28.24.64.4229.
To my surprise I actually have a NVIDIA card in the laptop, its a GT520M on driver version 391.35
Having played back a couple of 720p mkv’s I see that only the CPU’s are being used to transcode playback to a Roku Streaming+ stick, but when playing back 1080p material I see 100% CPU usage on the server and playback on the Roku pauses, both GPU are not utilised.
NOTE: I am playing back the “Jellyfish Video Bitrate Test Files”, the file chosen for playback is: jellyfish-110-mbps-hd-h264.mkv (http://jell.yfish.us/media/jellyfish-110-mbps-hd-h264.mkv)
I am unsure why this is happening, any pointers? Attached should be my server logs if it helps.
Plex Media Server Logs_2019-08-31_22-17-03.zip (451.7 KB)
Thanks.
Please use maximum 35 mbps video files.
The Jellyfish videos are extreme cases which you’ll hardly find in “real” videos.
