Is 40Mbps upload enough for streaming 1080p high reliably to one person outside of my network.?

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My upload speed is 40Mbps
Server OS: Windows 10
Server CPU: I7-6700k
Server GPU: RX480 8GB

It’s hard to do testing outside of my network as it’s kind of hard to get family members to try different setting/ different content as well as “log” the issues they have and tbh I’m not totally sure where to start anyway.

Most of my content is high bitrate/quality (at least 1080p) but I try to also get 4k versions when available. --Both 4k and 1080p are on the same library which might be problematic but one thing at a time I guess.

For the most part local playback is flawless (at least I haven’t seen buffering issues in a while)
But my sister which is currently watching from her boyfriends house (they have at least 360Mbps download) is having buffering problems unless they convert to 720/low-quality on both the smart tv (I think its a fire stick) and also her PC ( RTX3070 & RYZEN 5 5600X)

I went over and tried playing some content and it mostly just kept buffering. I don’t really remember the specifics that we tried but I remember seeing it saying that the fire stick said it wasn’t fast enough at times. I also did some testing by playing a 4k movie over a cellphone on mobile data (LTE/5g) and it seemed to actually play better

cellphone test:
I don’t really care to be able to stream 4k (not opposed but I want at least 1080p)
when set to convert to 1080p hd (high) 20Mbps– good bit of buffering about every minute or two

when set to convert to 1080p hd (medium) 12Mbps– buffering about every 3-5 minutes

when set to convert to 1080p hd 8 Mbps– buffers the same as 1080p hd medium but possibly better

I didn’t bother testing 720p as this is my question, Shouldn’t I be able to stream 1080p, at least plain ol’ HD just fine?

During the cellphone testing Tautulli stats were this:

PRODUCT: Plex for Android (Mobile)
PLAYER: Galaxy Z Fold4
QUALITY: 8 Mbps 1080p (7.5 Mbps)
STREAM: Transcode (Speed: 0.8)
CONTAINER: Converting (MKV to MKV)
VIDEO: Transcode (HEVC (HW) 4k HDR10 H264 (HW) 1080p SDR)
AUDIO: Transcode (English - TrueHD 7.1 OPUS 7.1)
SUBTITLE: None
BANDWIDTH: 7.9 Mbps

I plan on having a friend try playing my content on his network soon if he can find some time but is there any other tests I cant do to narrow this down?

EDIT:
Thank you all for helping,
I Should have looked up what the transcode speeds numbers actually meant in the docs as I had assumed that if it was running at 0.8 it was not needing more power and that is opposite of the truth thanks.

Honestly Really should have read more thoroughly through the docs when I set up plex but locally I never have issues and until my sister started going out and watching high quality movies at another place I didn’t see an issue, also it was weird because I was able to stream blade runner at 1080p just fine in hotel WIFI a long while ago but ig it was just a fluke or I am misremembering if I had it re transcoded or something.

As for a temporary solution until I get a better CPU/GPU as it seems from what I’m learning here I’m hardware bottlenecked I might need to pre-transcode some of my titles as space is no issue.

Basically I just want good quality 1080p high over network so ill need to read up on best way to transcode my content while optimizing for streaming over network whether that be using plex to do it for me or using handbrake or something.

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Notice the transcode speed is 0.8. Your system is struggling to transcode 4K HDR media.

Also, on Windows systems, HDR to SDR tonemapping requires a Nvidia GPU. Your CPU is not powerful enough to perform the task in software in real time (HDR to SDR Tone Mapping).

Try limiting your testing to 1080p SDR media.

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Also, don’t forget that most clients by default self-restrict themselves when viewing content on a remote server. If you remove the auto-transcode-if-over-2-mbps setting, then your server will attempt to send the original video rather than forcing a transcode. If transcoding in real-time is the throttle here, try to avoid transcoding in the first place.

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I’d recommend if realtime transcoding is an issue as it is here, but space isn’t, you can pre-transcode some of your titles ahead of time to the desired bitrate in order to allow your users to stream that without having to transocde for them in real time.

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This might be my temporary solution until I get a better cpu/gpu as it seems from what I’m learning here I’m hardware bottlenecked

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Well that actually makes perfect sense.

I Should have looked up what the transcode speeds numbers actually meant in the docs as I had assumed that if it was running at 0.8 it was not needing more power and that is opposite of the truth thanks.
Honestly Really should have read more thoroughly through the docs when I set up plex but locally I never have issues and until my sister started going out and watching high quality movies at another place I didn’t see an issue also it was weird because I was able to stream blade runner at 1080p just fine in hotel WIFI a long while ago but ig it was just a fluke or I am misremembering if I had it re transcoded or something.

As for a temporary solution until I get a better cpu/gpu as it seems from what I’m learning here I’m hardware bottlenecked I might need to pre-transcode some of my titles as space is no issue.

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I don’t know much you can upgrade the CPU in that socket. Your fastest and easiest upgrade would be to unload the GPU and switch over to a Nvidia card

That will do the transcoding and tone mapping in hardware and save your CPU from struggling

https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding

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Agree with @JaysPlex regarding switching to Nvidia.

If you stay with Windows OS, you need a Nvidia GPU to get HDR to SDR tonemapping, so a CPU upgrade doesn’t buy you much.

Technically, you could upgrade the CPU to an i7-7700K and keep the same motherboard/ram/etc.

However, that only helps if you switch to running Linux. Via a 5 minute Google search, the cost of the CPU upgrade is basically the same as getting a used Nvidia GPU.

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I have recently considered switching my server to Linux but I haven’t used Linux as a daily for a bit now so I’m not fully sure yet. I also host game servers but that’s though SteamCMD and Minecraft so those run fine with Linux anyway so really I could go either way. I think the only software I use that’s not Linux supported is Samsung magician, process lasso (not really needed tbh), Plutonium for waw custom server for my brother & I, and since it’s been awhile for me using Linux drivers possibly.

Yeah I’m thinking a GPU upgrade might be the best idea but I have heard from posts that it might affect quality? not sure really. but id want correct tone mapping so probably worth it tbh

Looking at @JaysPlex reply I’m thing a cheep Quadro (p2/3000) might be best or a 1060 GP104 (6GB).

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The consumer based Nvidia cards like the 1060 are limited to 2 simultaneous transcodes at a time

The P2000 doesn’t have that limitation

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When streaming real-time, any drop in quality from using a current GPU vs CPU will not be noticeable. It might have been noticeable years ago (think 2nd or 3rd gen Intel Core CPUs). However, both Intel and Nvidia have improved the quality of transcoding in their GPUs in recent years.

There are also certain realities about the processing power needed to transcode & tonemap 4K HDR media in real time.

If you want to transcode & tonemap 4K HDR in real time with Plex, you really don’t have a choice but to use a GPU. You would need a serious system upgrade to do that with a CPU.

Transcoding a 4K movie in software requires a CPU with ~17000 passmark. That does not include tonemapping, which is also very CPU intensive.

An i9-13900K has a passmark of 59993. So, at most you could get three 4K transcodes, and that does not account for tonemapping, so you might get less.

In theory, you could buy an AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon with a 100,000 passmark and handle several 4K transcodes/tonemaps. However, those are $6000 CPUs that require expensive motherboards, error correcting memory, etc.

At that point, you’re probably better off keeping both 1080p and 4K versions of the media. You can buy a lot of hard drives for the cost of one of those CPUs.

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FYI, Nvidia recently upped the limit to five transcodes for their consumer cards (see the encode/decode matrix).

At some point the amount of RAM on the card becomes a limiting factor. The Elpamsoft page you linked earlier should have info to help with that.

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Oh, that’s good news. Did not know that, thanks

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