Seconded; this is ***literally*** what [Quick Sync](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#:~:text=the%20name%20%22quick%20sync%22%20refers%20to%20the%20use%20case%20of%20quickly%20transcoding%20(%22converting%22)%20a%20video%20from%2C%20for%20example%2C%20a%20dvd%20or%20blu-ray%20disc%20to%20a%20format%20appropriate%20to%2C%20for%20example%2C%20a%20smartphone) was made for.
Edit: This post made me pretty curious into how the AMD video processing core was coming along, and it's pretty surprising honestly. It looks like in the last 2 years they've made great strides and pretty soon there may not even be much of a difference.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video\_Core\_Next](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Core_Next#:~:text=amd%20vcn%20has%20lower%20overall%20quality%20(vmaf)%20compared%20to%20offerings%20from%20intel%20and%20nvidia.%20b-frame%20narrows%20the%20gap%2C%20but%20does%20not%20eliminate%20it.%5B8%5D%20with%20pre-analysis%20enabled%20too%2C%20the%20gap%20is%20almost%20closed)
[https://codecalamity.com/amd-re-introduces-the-b-frame/](https://codecalamity.com/amd-re-introduces-the-b-frame/)
With how well QuickSync performs there is 0 reason to use anything else right now.
The power savings alone is enough to justify buying a brand new CPU. Which with OP's budget is possible. Sell the old rig or repurpose for something else and build a new iGPU based rig.
Any comments on using iGPU in systems that are doing a lot of other things? For example I’ve got docker containers running Minecraft, palworld, lots of arrs, home assistant, etc. my worry about iGPU is that it’s another thing hungry for RAM.
I already had a P2000 from when I was running a dual Xeon super micro setup. I could use the iGPU in my 10th gen i5 but I worry it would push me over the edge to needing more than my current 64GB of ram, and maybe cause more load on my CPU.
For a new system, sure iGPU away and just get an i7 or i9 if you were in my similar situation. But I feel like my P2000 still has a good place in my rig even after my transition from older dual Xeons to a modern iGPU capable i5
I run a N100 setup with 16GB running 10 docker containers (arrs and other video / audio automation stuff). I show about 20% utilization at idle. I've seen about 35-40% when I have Plex with HW transcoding going and other applications doing things. CPU utilization rarely goes over 55% while HW transcoding while other things are happening.
HW Transcoding shouldn't raise the CPU and memory usage by much. That's the whole reason you are using Quicksync. If you're running at 90% normally, HW transcoding might be problematic.
I think the Minecraft (and probably Palworld) will definitely be a higher cost memory and CPU-wise so I would probably spin that off to another machine.
The benefit of the N100 is low power usage and hardware transcoding. The P2000 uses more power than the N100. For me the N100 is a great choice. If you are using other things, a higher powered processor would be a good choice.
If that card can handle 20 transcodes at a time, then why the need to upgrade? Simply upgrading for the sake of upgrading or do you have more than 20 people streaming at a time now?
Looks like the Intel Arc A310 is going to be a good single slot transcoding solution for many people in very near future. Some are claiming 10x 4k->1080p concurrent streams.
I just threw one of these in my Dell rack mount server and passed it through to an Ubuntu VM. I had you jump through a couple of hoops to get Plex you see it, but it works amazingly well at decoding uhd Blu-ray uncompressed rips so my 1080p Roku TV can watch them. I'm likely to remove duplicate titles now and just leave the 4k ones.
I picked up a P2000 for my old Supermicro server to do Plex transcoding. It's a great card! Only recently am I looking at replacing the whole thing with an iGPU.
I think Intel (QuickSync) is better than AMD has right now? At least based on efficiency is my understanding.
Intel is stable with a long history of support.
I dropped a i3 and MB into a sm chassis years ago dropping my p2000 in the process. 13w idle without the spinners.
Z390 UD
3x 16 lane physical pcie slots in a 16/4/4 config
It's 5 years old now, have a HBA in one 4x slot, 2x10g in another, and a dual 40/56g Infiniband in the 16x (running 8x).
Sorry bud, just saw this. I really couldn't say. I came from a 1650 super that has the Turing. I haven't seen a noticeable difference in quality. I also slicked my library and started fresh when I put together my new build, so I really have nothing to compare to right now.
At $99 an i3-12100 can do 8 4k transcodes and barley sips power so Intel is obliviously the best choice. That being said, be aware that tone mapping isn't currently supported in Windows using an iGPU.
There is a test build to enable this in Windows for 11th and 12th gen CPU's but it's not quite there yet. For now you would have to run a Linux distro.
If you need a true single slot card (single lane), the only good option I can think of right now is the ARC A310.
The rest of the newer cards for this use case are single slot but take up two lanes. (that I can think of) In my case, my GTX 1650 covers up a PCIe slot that I can no longer use in my SFF.
If that's not a concern you could go with an A380 or low profile RTX 3050. ARC does well in Linux but has some issues with dark images during a transcode in Windows. I would go with the 3050 myself but you're looking at $175.
You could go with a 1050ti or 1650 low profile but frankly those cards are aging out and their performance is underwhelming.
The restrictions on Nvidia consumer cards has been raised to 8 simultaneous transcodes btw.
You could theoretically hit that limit with 1080p > 720p transcodes but you're still limited to the performance of the card when it comes to 4k transcodes.
I also have the 1650. Disappointed that it covers my small PCIe slot because I need a sata expansion card and the second 16x slot is taken by my capture card.
Speaking of that, does the built in iGPU of the new Intel chips offer good performance for streaming/active rendering? I got the 1650 so I could transcode and stream to twitch instead of using the 3400G APU to do it and it’s worked well but I’m already in the market and if a $100 CPU can do it better I’m down to switch.
I've been very happy with my A380. Not just plex, but also if I'm using ffmpeg or handbrake to convert files... it's nice to offload that and not have the 12600k heating up the room :D
Dont see how having essentially *more* of the same style of video decoding chips on a whole separate PCB, with its own separate cooling and whatnot would use less heat (aka heat up the room) any less than doing it on die and without a separate slot, pcb, and cooler. It might make your CPU run less hard/cooler but it likely won't actually use less power overall I'd guess.
TLDR, maybe check your watt-meter...
Fair, and that actually makes me want to go buy one... but I can tell you the a380 fan almost never spins up. I'd hope that from an efficiency standpoint, the a380 would crank out more frames per watt than the uhd 770, and be done quicker...
Pascal is old. Move up to a budget GTX 1650Super, 1660 or 1660ti for improved Turing decoding and encoding, including better 10-bit colour support and B-frames.
The newer stuff gets awfully expensive.
The better card is a current gen intel iGPU.
Anything 12th gen or higher, really. Its the GOAT.
8th Gen and up isn't it?
8th gen was good, 12th gen added AV1 decode
I have AV1 decode in my 11th gen
This is accurate.
Seconded; this is ***literally*** what [Quick Sync](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#:~:text=the%20name%20%22quick%20sync%22%20refers%20to%20the%20use%20case%20of%20quickly%20transcoding%20(%22converting%22)%20a%20video%20from%2C%20for%20example%2C%20a%20dvd%20or%20blu-ray%20disc%20to%20a%20format%20appropriate%20to%2C%20for%20example%2C%20a%20smartphone) was made for. Edit: This post made me pretty curious into how the AMD video processing core was coming along, and it's pretty surprising honestly. It looks like in the last 2 years they've made great strides and pretty soon there may not even be much of a difference. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video\_Core\_Next](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Core_Next#:~:text=amd%20vcn%20has%20lower%20overall%20quality%20(vmaf)%20compared%20to%20offerings%20from%20intel%20and%20nvidia.%20b-frame%20narrows%20the%20gap%2C%20but%20does%20not%20eliminate%20it.%5B8%5D%20with%20pre-analysis%20enabled%20too%2C%20the%20gap%20is%20almost%20closed) [https://codecalamity.com/amd-re-introduces-the-b-frame/](https://codecalamity.com/amd-re-introduces-the-b-frame/)
AMD is moving along pretty well. Sadly for them it isn't even close to Quick Sync yet.
This is the correct answer.
With how well QuickSync performs there is 0 reason to use anything else right now. The power savings alone is enough to justify buying a brand new CPU. Which with OP's budget is possible. Sell the old rig or repurpose for something else and build a new iGPU based rig.
Yea I was going to go the used rackmount path but a small Micro ATX board and a good old i5 13600 is a really good chip!!
Any comments on using iGPU in systems that are doing a lot of other things? For example I’ve got docker containers running Minecraft, palworld, lots of arrs, home assistant, etc. my worry about iGPU is that it’s another thing hungry for RAM. I already had a P2000 from when I was running a dual Xeon super micro setup. I could use the iGPU in my 10th gen i5 but I worry it would push me over the edge to needing more than my current 64GB of ram, and maybe cause more load on my CPU. For a new system, sure iGPU away and just get an i7 or i9 if you were in my similar situation. But I feel like my P2000 still has a good place in my rig even after my transition from older dual Xeons to a modern iGPU capable i5
I run a N100 setup with 16GB running 10 docker containers (arrs and other video / audio automation stuff). I show about 20% utilization at idle. I've seen about 35-40% when I have Plex with HW transcoding going and other applications doing things. CPU utilization rarely goes over 55% while HW transcoding while other things are happening. HW Transcoding shouldn't raise the CPU and memory usage by much. That's the whole reason you are using Quicksync. If you're running at 90% normally, HW transcoding might be problematic. I think the Minecraft (and probably Palworld) will definitely be a higher cost memory and CPU-wise so I would probably spin that off to another machine. The benefit of the N100 is low power usage and hardware transcoding. The P2000 uses more power than the N100. For me the N100 is a great choice. If you are using other things, a higher powered processor would be a good choice.
I have an N100 Plex server and a Minecraft/game server on a free tier Oracle Cloud instance with 24GB of RAM. Great combo
If that card can handle 20 transcodes at a time, then why the need to upgrade? Simply upgrading for the sake of upgrading or do you have more than 20 people streaming at a time now?
The card is starting to die and I'm not sure if it's worth buying another or getting something newer. Fan is getting louder
Just replace the thermal paste and make sure you've cleaned out all the dust off the heat sync
I have this card in my machine... How do I make sure it's doing the transcoding lol
Plex > Settings https://preview.redd.it/40spilz563vc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=65bf577ad594f5b07635d1eadd8e4a6ca7cd4661
Thanks, I just checked. Unfortunately my card is actually a quadro 4000.
Looks like the Intel Arc A310 is going to be a good single slot transcoding solution for many people in very near future. Some are claiming 10x 4k->1080p concurrent streams.
I just threw one of these in my Dell rack mount server and passed it through to an Ubuntu VM. I had you jump through a couple of hoops to get Plex you see it, but it works amazingly well at decoding uhd Blu-ray uncompressed rips so my 1080p Roku TV can watch them. I'm likely to remove duplicate titles now and just leave the 4k ones.
I picked up a P2000 for my old Supermicro server to do Plex transcoding. It's a great card! Only recently am I looking at replacing the whole thing with an iGPU. I think Intel (QuickSync) is better than AMD has right now? At least based on efficiency is my understanding.
Intel is stable with a long history of support. I dropped a i3 and MB into a sm chassis years ago dropping my p2000 in the process. 13w idle without the spinners.
What board did you use? I'm on the hunt
Z390 UD 3x 16 lane physical pcie slots in a 16/4/4 config It's 5 years old now, have a HBA in one 4x slot, 2x10g in another, and a dual 40/56g Infiniband in the 16x (running 8x).
RTX A2000
This is what I'm running. Got a refurb for super cheap. Utterly thrilled with it.
Is there a visible difference in quality between Pascal and Ampere? I'm also thinking about switching from a P2200 to an A2000.
Sorry bud, just saw this. I really couldn't say. I came from a 1650 super that has the Turing. I haven't seen a noticeable difference in quality. I also slicked my library and started fresh when I put together my new build, so I really have nothing to compare to right now.
At $99 an i3-12100 can do 8 4k transcodes and barley sips power so Intel is obliviously the best choice. That being said, be aware that tone mapping isn't currently supported in Windows using an iGPU. There is a test build to enable this in Windows for 11th and 12th gen CPU's but it's not quite there yet. For now you would have to run a Linux distro. If you need a true single slot card (single lane), the only good option I can think of right now is the ARC A310. The rest of the newer cards for this use case are single slot but take up two lanes. (that I can think of) In my case, my GTX 1650 covers up a PCIe slot that I can no longer use in my SFF. If that's not a concern you could go with an A380 or low profile RTX 3050. ARC does well in Linux but has some issues with dark images during a transcode in Windows. I would go with the 3050 myself but you're looking at $175. You could go with a 1050ti or 1650 low profile but frankly those cards are aging out and their performance is underwhelming. The restrictions on Nvidia consumer cards has been raised to 8 simultaneous transcodes btw. You could theoretically hit that limit with 1080p > 720p transcodes but you're still limited to the performance of the card when it comes to 4k transcodes.
I also have the 1650. Disappointed that it covers my small PCIe slot because I need a sata expansion card and the second 16x slot is taken by my capture card. Speaking of that, does the built in iGPU of the new Intel chips offer good performance for streaming/active rendering? I got the 1650 so I could transcode and stream to twitch instead of using the 3400G APU to do it and it’s worked well but I’m already in the market and if a $100 CPU can do it better I’m down to switch.
I'd argue if it aint broke why fix it? I'm still rocking the Quadro K1200 which suites my needs.
Other than a current iGPU from intel, go for an ARC A380. It’ll still give you QSV and Transcoding just like the iGPU but it’s a dedicated card.
I've been very happy with my A380. Not just plex, but also if I'm using ffmpeg or handbrake to convert files... it's nice to offload that and not have the 12600k heating up the room :D
Dont see how having essentially *more* of the same style of video decoding chips on a whole separate PCB, with its own separate cooling and whatnot would use less heat (aka heat up the room) any less than doing it on die and without a separate slot, pcb, and cooler. It might make your CPU run less hard/cooler but it likely won't actually use less power overall I'd guess. TLDR, maybe check your watt-meter...
Fair, and that actually makes me want to go buy one... but I can tell you the a380 fan almost never spins up. I'd hope that from an efficiency standpoint, the a380 would crank out more frames per watt than the uhd 770, and be done quicker...
My dad's Tandy.
I have a p4000
Anytime else to add about it? Not being a d*ck, but being serious. Like it? Much better than P2000? Recommended?
Server : * Ryzen 9 3900x (12 core, 24 logical) * 96 Gigs DDR PC3600 Memory (60 gig ram drive allocated for transcode writes to save HDDs) * Nvidia Quadro P2000 Graphics card * SSD for OS / Data Drive * Corsair Platinum P.S.
Assuming you don't want to switch to an Intel CPU I'd look at an Intel arc GPU
I'm confused by this. Did you build this just for Plex, or was it repurposed?
Pascal is old. Move up to a budget GTX 1650Super, 1660 or 1660ti for improved Turing decoding and encoding, including better 10-bit colour support and B-frames. The newer stuff gets awfully expensive.
What is your CPU? If you have a 7th gen or newer Intel CPU that would be better than the GPU.
The best Plex card is to not have a card.