well, decoding 265 in real time is hard, I would imagine that trying to encode x265 in real time is even harder.
so, not only would most people not have the hardware to do it, but transcode software would have to be able to do it first.
and plex is still in the middle of updating their transcoder so maybe it will work in the future if the hardware is capable, maybe not.
besides many/most non-4k clients need 264 not 265.
The display issues will depend if you have a second video output or not for vmware itself. If you do, itāll be like any other PCIe passthrough, you will still need nvidia drivers in the VM, but vmware tools wonāt help for things like display resizing.
Things get weirder if itās your only display output, as vmware will āloseā itās output part way through the boot loading bar, and will appear to freeze until the vm starts booting. You want to make sure it has a static IP before you enable passthrough for the card so you donāt lose the host.
Well ummā¦the server does not have a screen hooked up at all. Iām using HPeās Integrated Lights Out (ILO4) when i need to see the actual screen or manage firmware upgrades etc. besides that i use vmware remote console (before RDP is enabled) and Windows RDP once windows and fw rules are configured. So should i expect problems with this? Maybe get a displayport dummy or hook up a displayport > HDMI cable to a tv i have nearby?
I have quite a few movies encoded in 1080p x265 and they seem to transcode fine. I downloaded a ton of sample files from http://jell.yfish.us/ and the file ājellyfish-50-mbps-hd-hevc.mkvā which seems to be the worst case i run into runs fine, so maybe i have no real use for GPU assisted encoding just yet. I might buy one anyway because of the efficiency of having it hardware accelerated makes good sense 
Thatāll be fine, iLO cards have a minimal display adapter in them, and vmware consoles will still work for the windows boot process.
Sounds like everything is under control then 
i think dummy plug or real monitor is needed for plex transcoding
Awesome!
Now i just need to decide between a passively cooled 2-slot 1050 (or 1050TI) a PNY Quadro P400 or a PNY Quadro P2000 
I really hope not, AFAIK they would even need to fake the right resolution (4K) as well.
I dont even know where to get one in my country (Denmark)
well i got mine on amazon 3 for 10 dollars or less I think
Do you have a link to one that you think would work?
Might as well look around after oneā¦since i just ordered the P2000 :)
found this one
4k emulator
i bought this, 3 pack mini display port, because that is what the p400 uses.
thanks
Are you using all three at the same time, or just one?
Was wondering why they sell them in packs 
A single pascal Nvenc can only transcode 4k to 1080p at about a .6-.7 rate. That goes for EVERY card in the same family. A P400 and P2000 have the same nvenc performance overall, barring video ram.
While a P2000 has no stream limit it will only be able to manage the same .6-.7 as a P400 while transcoding 4k.
Youād need a 1080ti or a P5000 to do real time 4k transcoding (they have 2 nvenc chips).
Wait for an inexpensive Turing quadro card to do 4k. It has about 2x performance on the nvenc chip as pascal.
That said, 4k UHD doesnāt do tone mapping anyway (10:8 bit) so it would look terrible if you transcoded 4k content down to 1080p.
thanks, thatās good info anaander 
I have dismissed the idea of transcoding 4K > 1080p due to all those HDR color/tone mapping issues . I have ordered the P2000 just to take the load off the CPUās and to do faster conversions and optimiced versionsā¦and just to play around with really.
I only use one, but the card itself supports multiple monitors.
I think it was one of the cheapest of the packs at the time I bought it.
I am sure they sell them in packs, so it it increases the prices and the overall quantity of plugs.
Why sell 1 to every person, when you can make the minimum purchase 3.
Instant 3x profit.
Ok, so i got it up and running, and it doesnt seem to make much difference whether or not i plug in a monitor, The GPU hovers around 17-25% GPU utilization when converting a 38Mbps 1080P file down to 20Mbps 1080P inside Plex.
Strange thing though is that the CPU still being hammered at around 85-95% on all 4 cores (only gave it 4x2100mhz cores in vmware) any ideas why this happensā¦I was expecting the CPUās to be more or less idling with a Quadro present?
What would be a good test, to se everything works as it should?
I made a completely new Plex server on a VM running Win10 (1809) didnt want to risk too many issues with my original server running Plex as a service. I offcource installed the latest Quadro 416.78 WHQL drivers, and enabled hardware acceleration in Plexā¦thatās prety much it.
Windows detects two display adapters and two monitors in windowsā¦not sure if thatās ok. There is a Nvidia Quadro and a vmware SVGA 3D adapter, as well as two monitors.
One thing i notice though without a physical monitor attached i cant open nvidia controlpanel (not that i need it) Unsure if I need those dummy plugs or not.
Iām so glad I found this thread. @herngaard My P2000 just arrived today but Iāve discovered that it wonāt fit in my R620 so I canāt start doing the testing I was planning on doing tonight. I also have ESXi running and am planning on using PCIe passthrough to get this done. Did you end enable hardware transcoding inside of Plex?
Hi Ryan,
Sorry to hear it wont fit in your Dell server, how are you going to work around that?
Yeah I just enabled hardware encoding inside Plex and it seems to use it around 25% when converting files regardless of a monitor plugged in or not. After assigning 6 cores to the VM the CPU load looks more like a typical SMB filecopy load, Im copying from AND writing to the NAS.
One thing that annoys me though is that 2 of my servers totalt of 8 fans now run at 19% and the 6 others at an inaudible 6% (what they all used to run at)ā¦the two at 19% is enough to annoy me. This weekend Iāll try swapping my two E5-2620 v4 CPUās for a single E5-2660 v3 CPU and see if that brings the fans down. Otherwise the next step for me would be makig a cheap dedicated Plex PC with the Quadro and a i5 or i3 CPU.
There is a spare R720 at work that isnāt in use. Iāll swap one of my R620s for it. That should get me up and running but from what youāve said Iām not too hopeful. If it doesnāt work out Iāll also be building a physical box just for Plex using a Kaby lake i7 because that has the best Quick Sync features. I will also try using the R720 as a physical box just to see how it differs but I canāt see myself using that long term because itās such a waste of 2U if itās only being used for Plex. My entire point was to attempt to save $10 to $12 a month in power costs by switching to hardware decoding.
