What's the best bang-for-the-buck Nvidia card right now?

[Cafe_Diem]

I’m looking to upgrade my old GPU for some Plex improvement, and I’d love some feedback. I’m running PMS for Windows 10 on this computer.

The computer is a quad-core Haswell with a GT 710. Honestly, it’s fine day-to-day. But it doesn’t handle 10-bit HEVC, and the transcode quality looks like, well, a card designed in 2015. The Haswell GPU can’t handle HEVC at all, of course, and transcoding quality is on par with the GT 710.

I’d looking for the cheapest recent-generation Nvidia card that can handle up to HEVC 10-bit, and has better AVC encode quality. I have a B85 motherboard with a PCI-Express slot available, PCIe 3.0 x16. It would be a bonus if it’s quiet.

I’m open to doing a refurb/used on eBay if it’s the best way to pick one up.

Last, I’d like to make sure it handles more than 2 transcodes. I don’t mind using the hacked drivers if it’s the best option and saves money. (Are people happy with the hacked drivers?)

It looks like the most popular cards for Plex are:

• The P4000 (still pretty expensive)
• GTX 1050 (under $100 on eBay but it has multiple fans)
• P620 (Closer to $150, give or take)
• P600 (Just over $100 on eBay)
• P400 (Also just under $100 on eBay)

Any recommendations? Are they all fairly equivalent in terms of quality and number of transcodes? I wish I had more time to research but it’s been limited lately. I’m hoping some of the local experts here have done this footwork already.

[ExeCute]

Ill keep it short and sweet, I was in a similar situation to you.

I ended up going for a GTX 1660 for £190, patched linux driver which was simple and runs like a dream @ 20-40w depending on demand.

[wesman]

@ExeCute, I was just looking at that exact card. Given with the patch its the lowest card that supports:

• it is unlimited NVDEC and Unlimited NVENC
• supports up to the HEVC B Frame support for encoding and
• H.265 (HEVC) 4:4:4 (12 Bit) for Decoding

How is it working for you since you installed it?
Have you ever had need of the multi-tranocde (Both Decode and Encode)?
How does the quality look?

[ExeCute]

Quality is good, you have no worries on that.

Its not had a single problem since install.

Transcoding a 1080 Blu-ray with the ‘Decode/Encode patch’ used around 300-400mb RAM per transcode session. Which would max out the cards RAM @ 18-22 sessions. But this used 0% CPU.

Im running dual Xeon v2’s and decided to use it without the patch so each transcode session is using around 70 - 100mb per 1080 transcode and with around 12-14 transcodes running is using around 20-30% CPU.

[wesman]

@ExeCute Thanks for the quick response.

Do you have much experience with 4K Transcodes? I specifically looking to use this card with that purpose in mind, I have two or three remote family members that watch movies pretty regularly.

In the past my CPU (a beast) could handle any 1080P Transcodes, but of late, i have been adding more and more 4K Content, and the transcodes on that are really starting to be an issue even with QuickSync when more than 1 person is trying to transcode.

Have you tested how many 4K Transcodes you can run?

[wesman]

Sorry, Also, did you have to use a Dummy HDMI plug? to get the card to work?

[Cafe_Diem]

On my Quadro P400 with Windows 10, I haven’t needed a dummy plug. I definitely do need one with Windows/Intel. Your mileage may vary, of course!

[ExeCute]

Why are you transcoding 4K content? Wouldn’t it be easier to have the 1080 content of those items for people with non 4K?

I know they use a lot lot more RAM. I wouldn’t worry about gpu usage, it’s just ram available really.

[wesman]

@ExeCute having multiple copies of the same movie… tends… to make… my eye… twitch…

I’d rather just have a single copy of a movie, let it transcode as needed. That is what happens with all the rest, why make 4K different?

I am hoping the “ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce GTX 1660 Overclocked 6GB” card will solve that particular problem. Currently, for no reason I can understand, plex won’t use the QuickSync on the process and I end up with this (Below). I am trying to avoid that. @OttoKerner. can you tell me why its not using hardware transcoding? is 4K not supported, it is an Intel i7-7700, and “use Hareware Transcoding is enabled”

Plex Media Server Logs_2019-09-10_17-36-06.zip (175.3 KB)

[TeknoJunky]

@wesman

• make sure you have the latest intel drivers
• make sure you are logged into windows as a user, not trying to run plex as service
• make sure the intel gpu is the primary display adapter (if it is the only gpu, this should already be true). If you have another gpu, make sure the intel gpu is enabled in the bios, and that windows is configured to use the intel gpu as the primary display.
• make sure a monitor is connected to the intel display out (at least as a test, or use a dummy hdmi plug)

if you are running a virtualized windows all bets are off and you are all on your own- you need to get gpu pass through working for whatever virtualization software you are using (google will probably help you there)

• finally, there is a new plex transcoder alpha preview that may resolve the issue (be sure to make sure all the above has been tried first).

[wesman]

@TeknoJunky

• make sure you have the latest intel drivers
• make sure you are logged into windows as a user, not trying to run plex as service
• make sure the intel gpu is the primary display adapter (if it is the only gpu, this should already be true). If you have another gpu, make sure the intel gpu is enabled in the bios, and that windows is configured to use the intel gpu as the primary display.
• make sure a monitor is connected to the intel display out (at least as a test, or use a dummy hdmi plug)

if you are running a virtualized windows all bets are off and you are all on your own- you need to get gpu pass through working for whatever virtualization software you are using (google will probably help you there)

• finally, there is a new plex transcoder alpha preview that may resolve the issue (be sure to make sure all the above has been tried first).

Yep on all of the above, except the Virtualized Windows. clearly is not using the GPU though, you can see it does not have the (HW) next to the transcode…

I have heard of the Alpha. was thinking of giving it a try.

[TeknoJunky]

if you go to your server settings > console

you can monitor the logs while trying to play something that transcodes.

the log lines with MDE: and the ones near them, will give you more information about what plex is detecting and why hardware transcoding is falling back to cpu.

edit:

also, double check that server > settings > transcoder > Use hardware acceleration when available - is enabled (and enable/save settings, if it is not).

regarding best nvidia card-
fwiw I have a 1650 (upgraded from p400) an it works well, I am using linux/proxmox + alpha transcoder preview.

I get 2x 4k/hdr > 1080p transcodes with 4gig of video ram.

in windows, it may not matter as much, but in linux with NVDEC, the bottleneck is VIDEO RAM. So if anyone wants to use nvidia + linux, make sure you try to buy the card with the most video ram that you can afford.

[wesman]

The only two things that jump out at me are:

Sep 10, 2019 17:33:10.063 [13336] DEBUG - MDE: Avengers: Endgame (2019): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc

and

Sep 10, 2019 17:33:11.638 [15696] ERROR - [Transcoder] [hevc_mf @ 03a10f80] failed processing input: 80004005
Sep 10, 2019 17:33:11.653 [2168] ERROR - [Transcoder] Video encoding failed
Sep 10, 2019 17:33:11.731 [2644] DEBUG - HTTP 200 response from GET https://epg.provider.plex.tv/grid?beginsAt%3C=1568289600&channel=5cab3c6381ae00001cced3a4&endsAt%3E=1568116800&X-Plex-Api-Token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sep 10, 2019 17:33:11.731 [10304] DEBUG - Jobs: 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\Plex Transcoder.exe' exit code for process 16616 is 1 (failure)
Sep 10, 2019 17:33:11.731 [2192] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Changing client to use software decoding
Sep 10, 2019 17:33:11.731 [2192] ERROR - ClientProfileExtra: video transcode target already exists for  streaming hls

The second seems to indicate an error for hardware transcoding, but its greek to me

[TeknoJunky]

no direct play, means that your client cannot direct play the file (hevc in mkv container)

the others, yes seem to point to plex attempting to transcode via hardware, and failing for unclear reasons.

you might want to open a new thread, with all the specific info about your system, OS, cpu/ram/plex client and server versions, screen shots of the server > now playing window for a video that doesn’t hardware transcode.

and a fresh set of full logs replicating the problem;
(make sure DEBUG logs are ENABLED, and verbose logs DISabled)

shutdown plex server
wait a minute or so
start plex plex server
wait about a minute for server to settle
start the video on the client
let it run for about a minute
stop the video
wait ~30-60 seconds
download the logs @ Plex Web > settings > troubleshooting > download logs (you will get a zip file with all the necessary logs).
attach logs and all the above details in a new thread (not this one, this is all off topic).

[Cafe_Diem]

Just a shot in the dark here: Have you tried turning the subtitles off and seeing if hardware encoding works?

[wesman]

@TeknoJunky

you might want to open a new thread, with all the specific info about your system, OS, cpu/ram/plex client and server versions,

Indeed, I sort of hate when people do that, and yet here I am

@Cafe_Diem

Just a shot in the dark here: Have you tried turning the subtitles off and seeing if hardware encoding works?

That is one hell of a shot, you were dead on, Subtitles off = Hardware Processing…