Is there a tipping point between hardware and software transcoding?

[TheEmrys]

I have done quite a lot of searching. And I let the question sit for 11 days. The articles I checked were:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/
and

[INFO] Plex, 4k, transcoding, and you - aka the rules of 4k

NOTE: for 2022 – Plex has come a long way since this FAQ was originally written, HW transcoding has become more available and more stable, and tone mapping was recently added to address the hdr/sdr color conversion issues. The first 4 ‘rules’ generally are no longer as important as they once were, but may still be a good thing to bear in mind. Dolby Vision, is an entirely other mess. THIS thread/FAQ is NOT about DV. DV work is still in progress, and there are no perfect TV’s or external devic…

Neither of which really addressed my question. Are there ones I am missing that address the use of massive numbers of CPU cores?

The forum posts I checked were:

New plex server advice threadripper 3960x or i9-10940x

Hi i am looking at upgrading my server and am not sure which processor to go with Currently I have i9-9900k No gpu worth mentioning 1 ssd to do transcodeing and 2 striped nvme to hold main plex server folder and os I am not sure if I should get the threadripper or i9 I what to be able to transcode about 15 to 20 streams while direct streaming another 10 or 15 I have 1gb up and down Internet My current processor can handle 20 streams half transcode and direct Regards

And then another thread I have loked had a good answer by you regarding hw vs sw, and how strong the Ryzen 7 3700x is compared to an i7 8700.

SW vs HW acceleration, against cpu brands

I think my old problems may not be relevant anymore. (however I will test) so let me ask my main questions again, to get back on track. What does HW acceleration do? Can I run an AMD Chip in HW acc OFF mode the same as an i7 chip? Can we expand on the what with respect to the hardware AMD vs intel (QuickSync) In the meantime I am testing HW mode on on my intel chip. my next investigation will be what happens when I add my nVidia1070 gpu to the HTC.

It also touts the strength of the Ryzen 7 mated to an Nvidia video card. But “screaming” is hard to quantify. Nor does that look at when things get to 64/128 threads. Is there a point where software (CPU with very high numbers of cores) in brute force will be more effective than hardware (Intel QSV (seems like this is approachable) or Nvidia (seems nearly untouchable))?