I have been thinking of getting a new Plex server. Before, it was easy to figure out what was best: A CPU that has really high Passmark score for multiple transcoding. Now there is GPU transcoding to think about. So I was wondering what would be a better way to go. I have some examples below, which are used systems. I’m only listing CPU and GPU, as most will have minimum 16GB ram and SSD.
Prices are in Canadian:
Xeon E3-1225 v3 and a nVidia Quadro K600 - $499.99
Dual Xeon E5620 - $250 + nVidia Quadro K620 - $75
Dual Xeon E5645 - $445 + nVidia Quadro K620 - $75
Dual Xeon E5530 - $345 + nVidia Quadro K620 - $75
Dual Xeon E5-2630 v2 and nVidia Quadro K2000 - $1,399
i7-3770 and nVidia Quadro 410 - $459
These are just examples, but hopefully you can see where I’m going here. Just of note:
I was looking at Quadro cards because nVidia consumer cards are limited to 2 hardware transcodes and I have found no info on AMD cards, so not sure if they are supported.
I’m not interested in creating optimized versions, as I don’t want to keep multiple versions of the same movie\show.
Reason for transcoding is I have friends/family and myself that use tablets/phones at various times.
Not everyone I share with has the right equipment to direct stream.
Thanks for any input! I’m also open to suggestions and ideas, as I’m not fixed to any one solution. Except for housing multiple optimized versions of files.
Hardware transcoding is only officially supported for Intel QSV-capable CPUs. Anything which may ‘fall out’ in Windows or through custom driver installation is a bonus for the user.
nVidia is reported to have an artificial limit of 2 transcodes per GPU
PMS only uses one GPU regardless how many are installed.
In my experience, and knowing what I do about where hardware transcoding is, you’re better off with an i7-class CPU with strong GPU over a Xeon (which traditionally doesn’t have a GPU)
I run an i7-6700 in my NAS and it does very well. I ran out of players (6) to add to my test when performing 4K 50 Mbps -> 2K 20 Mbps transcoding. There was no issue with the CPU/GPU at all. Memory is important. The GPU must have memory to write to. I have 32 GB.
I wouldn’t use a SSD for the transcoding temp unless you’re ok with burning through it relatively quickly. HD’s can handle well over 120 MB/sec (which would be 1 Gbit/sec of video)
So you find that a i7 with a good embedded Intel graphics for QSV is better than Xeons with a Quadro card using NVENC which do not have the artificial 2 transcode limit that consumer cards have? I believe Quadros can do up to 6 transcodes.
What about AMD? I have yet to find anything regarding their video cards.
At this point of Plex hardware transcoding support, Quick Sync Video is the focus. This is where Engineering has staked ‘official support’. What they decide to do in the future is unknown.
I do know the Intel Libva / libvaapi libraries are critical for all the Linux and NAS boxes. Engineering will undoubtedly gate their actions on what comes from the December 22 (expected) release date of version 2.1. We got many features in 2.0.0 but one of the key functions needed didn’t make it into the release. Intel pushed it back to 2.1.
Some folks use an i7-77xx in an Intel NUC with PMP. It plays EVERYTHING; 4K HEVC HDR (4K UHD) without issue
At some point, I expect AMD support to creep in but would not expect it any time soon on all platforms. Quick Sync Video has a uniform API across all processors. I suspect that’s why it was chosen (maximum benefit at initial launch). Supporting AMD cards would require a much finely grained implementation. It would require custom test machines for each card type (lots of card swapping and a logistics PITA for the developers)
There is no artificial cap with QSV. I have ran up to 15 H.264 streams at 20Mbps transcoded from full bit rate BD remux. PMS was on a Skull Canyon NUC running Ubuntu 16.10. CPU is Skylake Intel Core i7-6770HQ
@Achilles said:
There is no artificial cap with QSV. I have ran up to 15 H.264 streams at 20Mbps transcoded from full bit rate BD remux. PMS was on a Skull Canyon NUC running Ubuntu 16.10. CPU is Skylake Intel Core i7-6770HQ
That’s awesome.
And I agree with @ChuckPA I would go with a decent i5 or i7 with the most recent iGPUs you can get (I run an i5-7500 with the HD630), it’ll be plenty good… and I haven’t really noticed artifacting in the HW transcodes.
@Achilles said:
There is no artificial cap with QSV. I have ran up to 15 H.264 streams at 20Mbps transcoded from full bit rate BD remux. PMS was on a Skull Canyon NUC running Ubuntu 16.10. CPU is Skylake Intel Core i7-6770HQ
That’s awesome.
And I agree with @ChuckPA I would go with a decent i5 or i7 with the most recent iGPUs you can get (I run an i5-7500 with the HD630), it’ll be plenty good… and I haven’t really noticed artifacting in the HW transcodes.
Its a Kaby Lake using 6th Gen QSV so artifacts are rare. HEVC HDR decode/encode is nice with the Kaby Lake for future proofing once Plex fully supports that.
So for multi transcode streams the best bet to have hw transcode is a recent intel cpu with iGPU.
I have an i5-6500 with 16gb ram and this is were the storage is and most streams take place. No dedicated GPU on this machine and it keeps up multiple streams but if a 4k takes place in line all starts to break… i was looking into a NVIDIA Quadro (P2000) or an AMD RX 560 but if Plex HW Transcode is going on iGPU only… dont know if upgrading to another CPU will make much difference…
On the gaming machine i have a i7 6700k that maybe could give a little better results…
2nd server for test’s is an oldie q6600 OC to 3.4 with a GTX 430 and sometimes it gives like 3 or 4 hw streams and the GTX is @100% but its random… same stream, same player sometimes is only CPU some times it seems only GPU…
HW is in beta so no clear results can be picked up on 100% to invest on hardware but it would be nice to get a mix of HW according to what machine has available
Thanks everyone for the input! This is the kind of info I have been looking for and seems to be lacking in forums. I encourage more people to post about their experiences and their findings with Hardware Transcoding.
I have been testing with a i5-2415M in a 2011 Mac Mini with a HD3000 that I had. Surprisingly, it can do hardware transcoding. But it doesn’t look like it will do more than one at a time. I’m running 16GB of RAM as well. And like @tchucho mentioned, it can be random sometimes in whether it chooses to use the CPU or iGPU.
@tchucho said:
So for multi transcode streams the best bet to have hw transcode is a recent intel cpu with iGPU.
I have an i5-6500 with 16gb ram and this is were the storage is and most streams take place. No dedicated GPU on this machine and it keeps up multiple streams but if a 4k takes place in line all starts to break… i was looking into a NVIDIA Quadro (P2000) or an AMD RX 560 but if Plex HW Transcode is going on iGPU only… dont know if upgrading to another CPU will make much difference…
On the gaming machine i have a i7 6700k that maybe could give a little better results…
2nd server for test’s is an oldie q6600 OC to 3.4 with a GTX 430 and sometimes it gives like 3 or 4 hw streams and the GTX is @100% but its random… same stream, same player sometimes is only CPU some times it seems only GPU…
HW is in beta so no clear results can be picked up on 100% to invest on hardware but it would be nice to get a mix of HW according to what machine has available
AMD and Nvidia work under Windows right now, but they’re not “officially” supported so I wouldn’t invest just for that.
Your gaming CPU wouldn’t change much for HW transcoding because it’s of the same generation, same iGPU (HD 530). The HD630 found in many Kaby Lake chips supports 4K 10 bit HEVC HW encode/decode… so that’s probably where you should put your money if you decide to invest right now. I run an i5 7500 which is middle of the road in terms of performance and price, but the HD630 makes it super powerful for this type of tasks.> @“Charlie Mack” said:
Thanks everyone for the input! This is the kind of info I have been looking for and seems to be lacking in forums. I encourage more people to post about their experiences and their findings with Hardware Transcoding.
I have been testing with a i5-2415M in a 2011 Mac Mini with a HD3000 that I had. Surprisingly, it can do hardware transcoding. But it doesn’t look like it will do more than one at a time. I’m running 16GB of RAM as well. And like @tchucho mentioned, it can be random sometimes in whether it chooses to use the CPU or iGPU.
Yes, I had the same experience with my Mac Mini before I sold it. Apparently it’s an OS limitation to only allow 1 stream. That GPU is old though, so it doesn’t support many codecs, that’s probably why a lot of your files don’t benefit.
In this case if a AMD ThreadRipper should come in the way… no HW available at the moment correct? It would all be done via “raw” software/cpu power processor…
Thanks again for the tip and this has been one of the most information topic i’ve read about the subject.
@tchucho said:
So for multi transcode streams the best bet to have hw transcode is a recent intel cpu with iGPU.
I have an i5-6500 with 16gb ram and this is were the storage is and most streams take place. No dedicated GPU on this machine and it keeps up multiple streams but if a 4k takes place in line all starts to break… i was looking into a NVIDIA Quadro (P2000) or an AMD RX 560 but if Plex HW Transcode is going on iGPU only… dont know if upgrading to another CPU will make much difference…
On the gaming machine i have a i7 6700k that maybe could give a little better results…
2nd server for test’s is an oldie q6600 OC to 3.4 with a GTX 430 and sometimes it gives like 3 or 4 hw streams and the GTX is @100% but its random… same stream, same player sometimes is only CPU some times it seems only GPU…
HW is in beta so no clear results can be picked up on 100% to invest on hardware but it would be nice to get a mix of HW according to what machine has available
AMD and Nvidia work under Windows right now, but they’re not “officially” supported so I wouldn’t invest just for that.
Your gaming CPU wouldn’t change much for HW transcoding because it’s of the same generation, same iGPU (HD 530). The HD630 found in many Kaby Lake chips supports 4K 10 bit HEVC HW encode/decode… so that’s probably where you should put your money if you decide to invest right now. I run an i5 7500 which is middle of the road in terms of performance and price, but the HD630 makes it super powerful for this type of tasks.> @“Charlie Mack” said:
Thanks everyone for the input! This is the kind of info I have been looking for and seems to be lacking in forums. I encourage more people to post about their experiences and their findings with Hardware Transcoding.
I have been testing with a i5-2415M in a 2011 Mac Mini with a HD3000 that I had. Surprisingly, it can do hardware transcoding. But it doesn’t look like it will do more than one at a time. I’m running 16GB of RAM as well. And like @tchucho mentioned, it can be random sometimes in whether it chooses to use the CPU or iGPU.
Yes, I had the same experience with my Mac Mini before I sold it. Apparently it’s an OS limitation to only allow 1 stream. That GPU is old though, so it doesn’t support many codecs, that’s probably why a lot of your files don’t benefit.
In this case if a AMD ThreadRipper should come in the way… no HW available at the moment correct? It would all be done via “raw” software/cpu power processor…
Thanks again for the tip and this has been one of the most information topic i’ve read about the subject.
@tchucho said:
So for multi transcode streams the best bet to have hw transcode is a recent intel cpu with iGPU.
I have an i5-6500 with 16gb ram and this is were the storage is and most streams take place. No dedicated GPU on this machine and it keeps up multiple streams but if a 4k takes place in line all starts to break… i was looking into a NVIDIA Quadro (P2000) or an AMD RX 560 but if Plex HW Transcode is going on iGPU only… dont know if upgrading to another CPU will make much difference…
On the gaming machine i have a i7 6700k that maybe could give a little better results…
2nd server for test’s is an oldie q6600 OC to 3.4 with a GTX 430 and sometimes it gives like 3 or 4 hw streams and the GTX is @100% but its random… same stream, same player sometimes is only CPU some times it seems only GPU…
HW is in beta so no clear results can be picked up on 100% to invest on hardware but it would be nice to get a mix of HW according to what machine has available
AMD and Nvidia work under Windows right now, but they’re not “officially” supported so I wouldn’t invest just for that.
Your gaming CPU wouldn’t change much for HW transcoding because it’s of the same generation, same iGPU (HD 530). The HD630 found in many Kaby Lake chips supports 4K 10 bit HEVC HW encode/decode… so that’s probably where you should put your money if you decide to invest right now. I run an i5 7500 which is middle of the road in terms of performance and price, but the HD630 makes it super powerful for this type of tasks.> @“Charlie Mack” said:
Thanks everyone for the input! This is the kind of info I have been looking for and seems to be lacking in forums. I encourage more people to post about their experiences and their findings with Hardware Transcoding.
I have been testing with a i5-2415M in a 2011 Mac Mini with a HD3000 that I had. Surprisingly, it can do hardware transcoding. But it doesn’t look like it will do more than one at a time. I’m running 16GB of RAM as well. And like @tchucho mentioned, it can be random sometimes in whether it chooses to use the CPU or iGPU.
Yes, I had the same experience with my Mac Mini before I sold it. Apparently it’s an OS limitation to only allow 1 stream. That GPU is old though, so it doesn’t support many codecs, that’s probably why a lot of your files don’t benefit.
Exactly. Threadripper is a beast for many things, and if you want to run a bunch of things at the same time as you run Plex it might be a smart choice, but if you’re just building a cost-conscious PC tower for a Plex server for yourself and a few friends, I think a CPU similar to mine makes more sense.
If you do choose threadripper, you could always add a dedicated GPU to help things out, though. But you’re looking at a lot more money.
In this case if a AMD ThreadRipper should come in the way… no HW available at the moment correct? It would all be done via “raw” software/cpu power processor…
Thanks again for the tip and this has been one of the most information topic i’ve read about the subject.
@tchucho said:
So for multi transcode streams the best bet to have hw transcode is a recent intel cpu with iGPU.
I have an i5-6500 with 16gb ram and this is were the storage is and most streams take place. No dedicated GPU on this machine and it keeps up multiple streams but if a 4k takes place in line all starts to break… i was looking into a NVIDIA Quadro (P2000) or an AMD RX 560 but if Plex HW Transcode is going on iGPU only… dont know if upgrading to another CPU will make much difference…
On the gaming machine i have a i7 6700k that maybe could give a little better results…
2nd server for test’s is an oldie q6600 OC to 3.4 with a GTX 430 and sometimes it gives like 3 or 4 hw streams and the GTX is @100% but its random… same stream, same player sometimes is only CPU some times it seems only GPU…
HW is in beta so no clear results can be picked up on 100% to invest on hardware but it would be nice to get a mix of HW according to what machine has available
AMD and Nvidia work under Windows right now, but they’re not “officially” supported so I wouldn’t invest just for that.
Your gaming CPU wouldn’t change much for HW transcoding because it’s of the same generation, same iGPU (HD 530). The HD630 found in many Kaby Lake chips supports 4K 10 bit HEVC HW encode/decode… so that’s probably where you should put your money if you decide to invest right now. I run an i5 7500 which is middle of the road in terms of performance and price, but the HD630 makes it super powerful for this type of tasks.> @“Charlie Mack” said:
Thanks everyone for the input! This is the kind of info I have been looking for and seems to be lacking in forums. I encourage more people to post about their experiences and their findings with Hardware Transcoding.
I have been testing with a i5-2415M in a 2011 Mac Mini with a HD3000 that I had. Surprisingly, it can do hardware transcoding. But it doesn’t look like it will do more than one at a time. I’m running 16GB of RAM as well. And like @tchucho mentioned, it can be random sometimes in whether it chooses to use the CPU or iGPU.
Yes, I had the same experience with my Mac Mini before I sold it. Apparently it’s an OS limitation to only allow 1 stream. That GPU is old though, so it doesn’t support many codecs, that’s probably why a lot of your files don’t benefit.
Exactly. Threadripper is a beast for many things, and if you want to run a bunch of things at the same time as you run Plex it might be a smart choice, but if you’re just building a cost-conscious PC tower for a Plex server for yourself and a few friends, I think a CPU similar to mine makes more sense.
If you do choose threadripper, you could always add a dedicated GPU to help things out, though. But you’re looking at a lot more money.
Well if a GPU can help out even a threadripper should also help on the current i5 setup and keep the GPU for a future machine or upgrade
In this case if a AMD ThreadRipper should come in the way… no HW available at the moment correct? It would all be done via “raw” software/cpu power processor…
Thanks again for the tip and this has been one of the most information topic i’ve read about the subject.
@tchucho said:
So for multi transcode streams the best bet to have hw transcode is a recent intel cpu with iGPU.
I have an i5-6500 with 16gb ram and this is were the storage is and most streams take place. No dedicated GPU on this machine and it keeps up multiple streams but if a 4k takes place in line all starts to break… i was looking into a NVIDIA Quadro (P2000) or an AMD RX 560 but if Plex HW Transcode is going on iGPU only… dont know if upgrading to another CPU will make much difference…
On the gaming machine i have a i7 6700k that maybe could give a little better results…
2nd server for test’s is an oldie q6600 OC to 3.4 with a GTX 430 and sometimes it gives like 3 or 4 hw streams and the GTX is @100% but its random… same stream, same player sometimes is only CPU some times it seems only GPU…
HW is in beta so no clear results can be picked up on 100% to invest on hardware but it would be nice to get a mix of HW according to what machine has available
AMD and Nvidia work under Windows right now, but they’re not “officially” supported so I wouldn’t invest just for that.
Your gaming CPU wouldn’t change much for HW transcoding because it’s of the same generation, same iGPU (HD 530). The HD630 found in many Kaby Lake chips supports 4K 10 bit HEVC HW encode/decode… so that’s probably where you should put your money if you decide to invest right now. I run an i5 7500 which is middle of the road in terms of performance and price, but the HD630 makes it super powerful for this type of tasks.> @“Charlie Mack” said:
Thanks everyone for the input! This is the kind of info I have been looking for and seems to be lacking in forums. I encourage more people to post about their experiences and their findings with Hardware Transcoding.
I have been testing with a i5-2415M in a 2011 Mac Mini with a HD3000 that I had. Surprisingly, it can do hardware transcoding. But it doesn’t look like it will do more than one at a time. I’m running 16GB of RAM as well. And like @tchucho mentioned, it can be random sometimes in whether it chooses to use the CPU or iGPU.
Yes, I had the same experience with my Mac Mini before I sold it. Apparently it’s an OS limitation to only allow 1 stream. That GPU is old though, so it doesn’t support many codecs, that’s probably why a lot of your files don’t benefit.
Exactly. Threadripper is a beast for many things, and if you want to run a bunch of things at the same time as you run Plex it might be a smart choice, but if you’re just building a cost-conscious PC tower for a Plex server for yourself and a few friends, I think a CPU similar to mine makes more sense.
If you do choose threadripper, you could always add a dedicated GPU to help things out, though. But you’re looking at a lot more money.
Well if a GPU can help out even a threadripper should also help on the current i5 setup and keep the GPU for a future machine or upgrade
I wouldn’t bet on it. The i5+HW transcoding is potentially more powerful FOR TRANSCODING than threadripper… but I could be wrong, haven’t seen comparisons.
@KarlDag that is exactly what I was looking for… real live scenarios with different combination os hw to see how gpu would or not help vs Intel with internal gpu or dedicated (don’t know if plex chooses when integrated and dedicated exist on same machine)
I can run 15x20Mbps HW transcoded Streams on a Skull Canyon NUC hosted by Ubuntu 17.04. For these purposes, all that is overkill. A Kaby Lake CPU will serve you well for Hw transcoding.
@tchucho said: @KarlDag that is exactly what I was looking for… real live scenarios with different combination os hw to see how gpu would or not help vs Intel with internal gpu or dedicated (don’t know if plex chooses when integrated and dedicated exist on same machine)
It uses the primary display adapter set on the OS level.
