McGillUSAF, NuclearXP is right with respect to Intel chips being able to offload certain CPU tasks to the GPU - I believe this functionality has been in place since 2016. Saying that AMD chips can’t do this, I’m not so sure. I tried to get an answer from AMD on this about 3 months ago, but no-one responded. I have now asked the Tom’s Hardware community the same question and will let you know what I hear.
However, in addition to the above, the core/thread count is important when it comes to transcoding - which is what most Plex users would find to be their biggest grievance - and I’m assuming this is possibly why you’re asking the question you are?!?. Transcoding 4K HEVC with HDR (10 or 12bpc - doesn’t matter) requires a massive amount of grunt, but how that grunt is applied technically is a bit different between Intel and AMD.
For instance, have a look at this article that Tom’s Hardware put out 4 days ago - https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html. It compares various Intel and AMD CPU’s against each other. Intel is better at pushing through stuff through each core/thread, however AMD has more cores/threads than what Intel has. Therefore, Intel is better at games and number crunching whereas, AMD is better when working with imaging, batch work and transcoding. But even as the article says, it doesn’t only just come down to cores/threads/Ghz - even the length of time burst can function can change things. You would think that the 2700X should be better than the 2600X, but the 2700X I believe is more affected by heat than what the 2600X is - thus shorter burst times. Put some good cooling on the 2700X, and I think you would see the 2700X out perform the 2600X.
Will keep you posted with respect to response on AMD question…
Response from a Tom’s Hardware Moderator:
“It’s not a matter of the cpu having an ability to offload (they don’t), it’s if the software is programmed to use the gpu. The cpu doesn’t control what the gpu can and cannot do. https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-har… According to the details, plex uses intel quicksync (for intel igpus) or nvidia encoder (for nvidia gpus) so you must either have one of those gpus. Since you can’t have an intel igpu on an amd cpu, you have to use an nvidia gpu to have hardware acceleration.”
Am so glad I bought the AMD 2700X in conjunction with an Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti - Best of both worlds…
Decoding yeah… I was referring to encoding HDR via a transcode.
Right now I didn’t think that you could decode then re-encode HDR in iGPU and even on CPU you need to fart around with settings to get proper SDR
Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake’s QSV supports HEVC HDR10 encoding but the PMS software does not have that functionality with either software or hardware assist.
This is really great information. It’s too bad that the MicroServer just doesn’t have enough juice with the AMX Opteron X3421 processor. It’s soldered down on the board so you really can’t upgrade it. Back to the drawing board for a solid server. I need something to replace my late 2011 MacMini which I’m using but it’s getting difficult with multiple 1080P streams.
Jumping in late here, but I just want to make sure I understand correctly. When transcoding to the same resolution and keeping the same color scheme (HDR), but simply a smaller stream size, is PMS having to decode then re-encode? As you said, HDR to SDR look will look washed out. But how about transcoding to a smaller 4k stream while keeping HDR? Similar to the difference in 1080p streams (8Mbps or lower). I don’t know if this is even an option in PMS as I don’t currently have any 4k HDR content.
So, PMS is not currently able to support the Hardware Capabilities on a KabyLake i7 to transcode HEVC 4k? Would have been nice to know before I just spent $600 upgrading my servers motherboard, CPU and memory.
Is there any plan to reintroduce 4k HEVC encoding support in the future?
