[Question] What to spend money on for server upgrade? ( lemmy.world )

Trainguyrom , 6 months ago

Video encoding you've really got 2 clear options: Either a 8th gen or newer consumer Intel chip with integrated graphics for QuickSync support or toss a GPU in there. You can also rely on raw CPU cycles for video transcode but that's wildly energy inefficient in comparison.

I've heard good things about how anything AM4 compares to x99 era Intel on both raw performance and performance per watt, but I have no personal anecdata to share.

Personally I'm currently eyeing up a gaming computer refresh as the opportunity to refresh my primary server with the old components from the gaming computer, but I'm also starting with literal ewaste I scrounged for free, so pretty much anything is big upgrade.

ch00f OP , 6 months ago

So my current processor has QuickSync. Are there generations of quicksync? Would a newer implementation be faster? There's not a lot of data out there. It seems like QS support is either yes or no.

Trainguyrom , 6 months ago

I'm not entirely certain. QuickSync is an Intel GPU feature and generally just listed as Yes/No on ark.intel.com so I'm inclined to suspect it doesn't have significant change from one generation to another. Most GPUs have a limited number of of video streams they can transcode at a time, so if you're exceeding that number then I believe it will have to brute force it on the processor which will be anemic on an older Celeron. Have you verified that Plex is actually using QuickSync to transcode? If its been hitting the processor this whole time that would easily do that.

ch00f OP , 6 months ago

Not sure what Plex is using, but Shinobi and Photoprism do.

Plex usually runs at native resolution, but it can just barely run if it has to downscale or bake in subtitles in real time. I'll have to check the settings to see what it's using.

Edit: Ah, looks like you need to pay for Plex Pass to enable Quick Sync.

Trainguyrom , 6 months ago

That would certainly do it! Stating the obvious, here, looks like you have 3 clear paths to take:

1. Purchase Plex Pass to enable hardware transcode
2. Switch to Jellyfin to avoid paying for Plex Pass
3. Upgrade the server to something with more CPU horsepower (and of course higher energy consumption) to compensate for lack of hardware transcode support

aBundleOfFerrets , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

QS is generational, and newer versions will be much better in quality than older ones, and have some more throughput too.

Important note: ARC gpus all have the same qs engine right now (A780 = A310), so even an arc a310 will decimate any cpu qs and will be much faster than any nvidia hardware encoder too. (qs encoder in a310 is slightly handicapped by lower vram bandwidth and size, but it is negligible)

stankmut , 6 months ago

Newer generations have decoders/encoders for more codecs. 8th gen Intel Core cpus have good HEVC support while you need the more recent gens for good AV1 support.