Server Version#: 1.31.2.6783
Player Version#: 4.102.1
I recently upgraded my Plex server to a 12th gen i5-12600K running on Windows 11 and discovered that the iGPU / UHD 770 was being pushed to really high utilization on even just a single transcode. This was causing prolonged buffering issue as a single transcode was pushing my UHD 770 to 99-100% GPU utilization. I have only partially mitigated the issue by doing a fresh Windows 10 install, but the high usage still remains and I’m hoping someone can point me to a few options to try and resolve this.
After doing some initial research, I discovered that Windows 11 was the likely culprit to this thanks to a few posts I came across, like this one. This partially worked, but not fully. I read lots of posts indicating that Windows 11 was working just fine with Plex and so, I made the upgrade as 12th & 13th gen CPUs supposedly perform better on W11 due how it’s able to utilize the P & E core more effectively/efficiently. My comment is by no means an indication that people are wrong about W11 working great with Plex, I think my issue may be somewhat unique to my server, and perhaps a few others.
Prior to making my hardware upgrades, I was running my server on an i3-10100 with Qick Sync on Windows 10 with no issues at all, often having 6-8 simultaneous streams with about 50-70% of them transcoding at any given time. The iGPU and Quick Sync were performing admirably and weren’t even really breaking a sweat. I’m confused about why this is happening and out of ideas on where to look next to try and resolve this problem.
Here are the steps I’ve taken so far to try and resolve the issue:
- Went back to Windows 10
- Set shared memory in BIOS to maximum 1024 instead of auto
- Set Intel Graphics Power Plan to “Maximum Performance” within the power options in control panel
- Running latest Intel UHD drivers 31.0.101.4146
While performance has improved and I can now run a few more transcodes before maxing out, there still seems to be an underlying issue that continues to cause high GPU utilization of the UHD 770. For example, here is a single transcode now utilizing about 40% of my iGPU.
Here are two transcodes that are pushing the UHD 770 between 30 - 75%.
I’m not actually sure when or why this started happening unfortunately. I only found out because a couple of remote users reached and told me that my server had been a bit unstable for them with frequent buffering issues that they were experiencing for several weeks
I really appreciate any help and support from the community on this, thank you in advance!
