# PMS: Hardware device rules

**URL:** <https://forums.plex.tv/t/pms-hardware-device-rules/887945>\
**Category:** Feature Suggestions\
**Created:** [September 11, 2024, 8:28pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/pms-hardware-device-rules/887945 "2024-09-11T20:28:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![maria-bmd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/51bf81/32.png) [@maria-bmd](https://forums.plex.tv/u/maria-bmd)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2024, 8:28pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/pms-hardware-device-rules/887945/1 "2024-09-11T20:28:13Z")

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My setup has two gpus; a GTX 1070 and an ARC A310.

The A310 I acquired recently to be able to live transcode AV1 since not all my devices support streaming it directly. The transcoding itself is working flawlessly, although it’s not the strongest card and I want to only use it for AV1, all other codecs I want to be handled by the 1070.

Currently the only options plex gives me are as such; Auto, Arc A310, GeForce GTX 1070;

 ![afbeelding](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/4X/f/c/7/fc77256b873e245c2bfdd07605baf88df582de27.png)

My problem is that Auto forces everything to go over the 1070, which fails for AV1 and defaults back to software and leaves the A310 hanging.

I would really like to have the option to set a hardware device per codec, this doesn’t need to be some elaborate rule system, but at least being able to select: av1:a310, all others: 1070 would be amazing.

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**Author:** ![BanzaiInstitute](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/banzaiinstitute/32/293273_2.png) [@BanzaiInstitute](https://forums.plex.tv/u/BanzaiInstitute)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2024, 8:42pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/pms-hardware-device-rules/887945/2 "2024-09-11T20:42:03Z")

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What specifically does the Arc suck at which the 1070 does better?

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**Author:** ![maria-bmd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/51bf81/32.png) [@maria-bmd](https://forums.plex.tv/u/maria-bmd)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2024, 8:56pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/pms-hardware-device-rules/887945/3 "2024-09-11T20:56:53Z")

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The Arc doesn’t suck, it’s simply less powerful. At two streams it’s at 80% utilization, and it often happens where more streams are happening at the same time, and only a small part of my library is av1.

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**Author:** ![BanzaiInstitute](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/banzaiinstitute/32/293273_2.png) [@BanzaiInstitute](https://forums.plex.tv/u/BanzaiInstitute)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2024, 9:59pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/pms-hardware-device-rules/887945/4 "2024-09-11T21:59:30Z")

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Got it, thanks. I am surprised to see those numbers, I was under the impression the Arc was actually a lot better than an old GTX.

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**Author:** ![LaZiOPLEX](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/lazioplex/32/221304_2.png) [@LaZiOPLEX](https://forums.plex.tv/u/LaZiOPLEX)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 5:32am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/pms-hardware-device-rules/887945/5 "2025-03-06T05:32:27Z")

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Thanks for posting this. I’m upvoting this but also would like the CPU to be a device choice as well. I’m not enjoying the current toggle that not only enables hardware transcoding, but forces it to do every job. It’s resulting in bloated, bandwidth-wasting high bitrates.

Examples:

AV-1 codec → Any resolution source file → transcode → send to GPU x  
X265 codec → Any resolution source file → transcode → send to GPU y

ANY codec → 1080p or lower source file → send to CPU

Something like that… thank you!