That’s kind of my last attempt to find a solution to my CPU issue with Plex, before I’m forced to uppgrade, so your advice would be much appreciated!
I’d like plex to play 4k movies from my collection, but alas my CPU has no chance to be able to transcode them - it’s a good old i5 3570K over clocked to 4.2 MHz, 4k is way to much to ask of it. On the other hand my GPU is a solid NVIDIA 1070, which has no issue playing 4k movies. I’ve read a couple of posts here about possibilities to utilise GPU in Plex, and came to understanding (maybe a false one) that should intel CPU have a Quick Sync Video tech, then switching to GPU for heavy lifting of 4k movies should be possible. I’ve played with Plex advanced settings a but and cannot see how to do the trick…
Please advise if the switch is possible at all, and if yes - how to do it.
Many thanks in advance!
P.S. I use latest version of Plex server for Windows 10 64bit. PC parameters are: 16GB DDR3 RAM, CPU: i5-3570K, GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1070 by Zotac, Samsung SSD EVO Pro 500 GB
Hardware accelerated encode/decode is a Plex Pass feature.
So first, sign up for a Plex Pass. You can try the monthly subscription first, $4.99 USD, to see how things work, then sign up for a longer term if applicable.
After signing up for a Plex Pass you’ll see a “Use hardware acceleration when possible” checkbox in Settings -> Transcoder.
Your 1070 will transcode up to two simultaneous videos. After that, your system will use the i5 CPU, not the integrated GPU.
I’ll check it out for sure! It might save me a fare bit of coin given the current spike in CPU prices for 8th Gen and DDR4 prices not coming down!! yet
Hi again!
I signed up for Plex Pass and then, in the settings activated ‘Enable HW acceleration when available’. Unfortunately, I’m still facing the same issue :
when trying to play back 4K content, my CPU utilisation goes to 100% and the GPU one stays under 10%;
the playback freezes every minute or so. It doesn’t try to scale down the conversion all the way to the SD quality anymore, but it doesn’t make it better.
I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong… Could it be that there are some additional settings I need to tweak?
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