I recently was able to acquire a GTX 1650 TU106 Model. I setup NVENC and the “patcher” to allow unlimited sessions. The experience with 1080p content is fantastic, I was able to test pushing 10+ transcode streams without issue.
Where I run into problems is with HDR Content. HDR Tone mapping kills it, and it can’t even handle one 4K HDR to 1080p stream. Disabling this feature allows does allow for two streams, but a third goes right to software. Is there a known limitation specifically for HDR content that isn’t labeled anywhere? The 1080p “limit” is 3 sessions, so it suddenly moving down to 2 for HDR is confusing.
In Windows, you can currently forget about transcoding 4K HDR to 1080p SDR. The utilization is simply far too high and sometimes not even possible. I am currently testing with an i3 10100 and UHD 630 - not even a 4K HDRtoSDR stream is possible in Win with this. Your GTX 1650 only has 4GB VRAM which is already very close with two streams. In Linux I need ~2GB VRAM with the RTX2080 per stream.
So you will have to wait or switch to Linux. But even in Linux you might run into difficulties, because for example PGS subtitle burn in again required “extreme” CPU load and the picture is overdriven again.
Two streams with PGS burn in are not feasible even with 3700X and RTX 2080 in Linux although the hardware is not exhausted! It buffers and stutters every few seconds.
So currently the options are still very limited and not possible in Windows.
Subtitles should or must not be burned in. The CPU transcode is “not recommended” as the image is always overdriven.
The only option that I have currently successfully tested is in Ubuntu and with clients that support subtitles. But I haven’t tested three streams.
Next, I’ll test my new system in Ubuntu. i3 10100 with Z490M, 16GB 2666MHz on P5 NVME SSD (transcode always in RAM). However, I do not expect miracles here, as I am in close contact with a forum member. He has a Unraid system, tested with i3 8100 and i3 9350K.
This is exactly what I was looking for! Many thanks.
I already intend to use Linux for my new deployment. I’m happy to hear it’s the preferred platform.
I am very curious how VRAM functions in the context of transcoding. Often in the context of video games some newer cards can get by with much less VRAM because of their memory compression algorithms. Does this all go out the window with transcoding?
Unfortunately I don’t have access to many GPU’s to test. It seems like my 1080 Ti can’t decode the HDR content. I do have a 3080 I could setup a test with. With 10GB of VRAM, if it scales linearly despite NVENC generation or memory bandwidth I should get 5 HDR streams.
One final question. How does Quick-Sync compare and use RAM? If I had say a 10900k with 32GB of RAM is the usage similar? Can Quick-Sync even handle more than one stream?
Looking at this, it seems bandwidth is mostly irrelevant. The 1660 and 1660 Ti goes from 192GB/s to 288GB/s but can render the same amount of streams.
The charts of MB per stream are super useful. I wish they were updated for 4:4:4(HDR). Now I see why the 1070 was regarded at the best. It has enough VRAM for tons of streams and if you’re working with regular 4k in SDR it’s probably still very capable.
It seems like a 2060 Super or higher is the minimum to have HDR streaming with multiple devices. They have the proper support in NVENC and have enough VRAM to do the heavy lifting.
I’m curious to see what a straight 5950X CPU can do with software, or what QuickSync is capable of.
As I said, in Windows not even a single 4K HDR to SDR stream works with the i3 10100 although the hardware is underutilized. Here you can see the missing tone mapping support in Windows.
The stream stops after approx 30 seconds and has to buffer. That goes on all the time.
If PGS subtitles “burn in” are added, the load even drops and it stutters and buffers even more:
All very strange. In my opinion this can only be explained by problems in the transcoder or driver.
So currently the tone mapping feature in Windows cannot be used for me and I deactivated it.
Yesterday I wanted to quickly install an Ubuntu. However, my new system does not start with it. But I didn’t spend long with it either. Made a USB stick with Ubuntu 20.10. Since I’m not a Linux expert, I have to deal with it first. I will report if I get it working.
Finally have some time to pick this back up. Did you figure out the “optimal” OS deployment? Looking to install something easy, hopefully Ubuntu, on a bunch of machines I have laying around just to see what is capable of what.
I got a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.10 and was very impressed with the results, but left curious. The first two transcodes used the expected amount of memory, but beyond that they did not. Can anyone else confirm this behavior? Streams beyond two use less memory, but still some, and start offloading load onto the CPU.
This is especially strange because there’s enough VRAM left on the GPU for another stream when I add the third. I’ve applied the NVENC Linux patch and given I don’t see this behavior with 1080p streams(I tried 7+ concurrent) it’s very strange.
I don’t seem to understand that completely (sry not an english speaking pro). If a stream requires 1329MB and the card has 3910MB available, isn’t it enough for a third stream!?
Plex on Windows 10 pro. Plexpass user. I’m running a GTX 1050 on a Haswell i7-4790K with 16 Gb ram. Just last night I had 1 user playing a 16 GB HDR tone mapped 4K HEVC movie. They were streaming at 720P, 4MB from this 4K file. I had two other users streaming a 1080P file at 720P, 4MB simultaneously. There were some other users off and on during those movies being played. My cpu usage was hovering at 30% for awhile, then the 4K stream user paused and went to a different device, started playing again and the audio was no longer transcoding because the 2nd device supported a a different codec. Then I was playing all three streams at ~10% cpu usage. This is typical for me. I have a Ryzen 9 ready to upgrade my Hazwell Plex server but the only thing that ever maxes out my Haswell is when trying to sync content to mobile devices. Even then it can stream a couple and sync simultaneously. I tend to think your NVENC drivers and video codecs installed on your machine may not be properly configured with PLEX. Make sure instal VLC Media player on the server. It installs a lot of codecs that are sometimes being used and may affect you based on the source of the Encoded content..I’ve added a screenshot of the 4K HDR file details.
