Will Plex use dual CPU?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

I have some 4K content and trying to transcode and my i5 cannot handle it. Pegs at 100% and the video buffers.

Looking around there are lots of old rackmount servers with dual Xeon processors for under $250. Will Plex use all cores of both processors? Realistically this should be a better option than one i5, yes?

2

You may be better off relying on hardware transcode via quicksync.

Get any recent Intel processor with quicksync and it can do two simultaneous 4k transcodes

I have a g4600 that does pretty well

3

FYI, QuickSync does require an active Plex pass to work. If you do not have a lifetime pass, keep in mind you’ll have to keep renewing it until Plex (maybe) turns it into a mainstream feature.

Give it a try with your current processor before buying anything else.

4

Looks like my i5 4440 might support that? I do not have a lift time pass but I plan on buying one.

5

This cpu was already released in 2013. I doubt it has HEVC 4K support in hardware.
https://ark.intel.com/en/products/75038/Intel-Core-i5-4440-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz

Apparently, it has not:

It might support hardware transcoding of AVC/H.264 content, yes.

6

I was looking at this, per Intel it has quick sync

7

There are different generations of Quicksync.
Look at the table at the wikipedia. It details which cpu generation you need for 4K HEVC support.

8

Well in order to update the processor to at least Skylake, I would need a new motherboard too. We are talking well over $400.

So then my original question stands, would Plex use all cores of both processors?

9

I am not optimistic. So far, reports from Windows users tell us that one transcoding stream will only use one cpu. The second cpu is only used when transcoding 2 streams at once (i.e. concurrent transcoded playbacks on 2 different clients).

10

Thanks Otto. I guess I’ll just start to save up for a new motherboard and CPU.

11

At that price point you might wanna take a peek at the quadro p2000
It doesn’t have any limit to concurrent encodes… maybe even find one used

12

i see some talk here about intel quicksync vs quadro p2000. Is there any more documentation regarding hardware transcoding with plex? everything I find seems to be very old, outdated, or just plain wrong. I would love to see a benchmark done on transcoding with various GPUs, and what the limitations of each one is.

13

Is hw transcode on nvidia officially supported?

Last I checked, it wasn’t. As long as you install the correct drivers and cuda, hw encode worked, but not hw decode.

I figured out that it was due to a missed build flag (for enabling cuvid) when compiling plex’s ffmpeg fork. I brought it to the devs’ attention but they said nvidia wasn’t officially supported so they wouldn’t fix it

Edit: Found it : NVIDIA GTX 770 hardware transcoding on Debian 9
And more details here: Plex Media Server - Hardware Transcoding Preview 4 (1.8.1.4140)

14

This was tagged windows so I’m assuming he’s not using linux which is indeed gimped for hw acceleration.

Heck, Ryzon Vega’s work in windows :frowning:

Couple people in here have the card working

15

Haha oops, still trying to get used to the new forum.

Yeah, on windows it might just work through dxva, but I’ll bud out :grin:

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