HW Decode RX550 Throttling X265

[amisbievre 3]

Hi everyone, 

I currently have some issues with hardware acceleration. I have an RX 550 with lastest drivers on debian 10 (kernel 5.10).

When I read a movie it's throttle a lot. The GPU is brand new. I added it because had only a CPU before (without iGPU).

Here are my logs and seetings. Let me know it you need something else

Edit: it's only whith big videos in HEVC (any size from arround 3Gb to 50+Gb)

What can I do to avoid this?

Thanks for your help

hardware_detection-63795130529.txt embyserver-63795130606.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1cf02a38-461a-4b78-a349-996452c5f64f_1.txt

Edited August 3, 2022 by amisbievre
Specify video type

[Luke 36997]

HI, @softworkz will take a look at this. Thanks.

[amisbievre 3]

Thanks!

I forgot to tell it runs in docker container. Here is my docker compose stack and just in case, vainfo returns

emby_docker_compose.yml

vainfo

Edited August 3, 2022 by amisbievre

[amisbievre 3]

After few investigations I can tell the throttling is only for 4k HEVC HDR10 videos

H264 doesn't use GPU (don't know if it's normal or not) and HEVC 1080p use GPU but there is no throttle.

Same if I disable throttling in transcoding parameters. If I pause the video arroung 10s for exemple, the video is smooth for few seconds and throttle again.

Here are some stats :

[softworkz 3325]

How did you install the AMD drivers?

Did you install AMDGPU Pro drivers  - following the instructions from here: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/amdgpu-installation ?

[amisbievre 3]

Hi

I used the non free repo from Debian as the official package is not compatible with Debian 10

(i.e https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-the-latest-amd-drivers-on-debian-10-buster)

lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Lexa PRO [Radeon RX 550/550X] (rev c7)
        Subsystem: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Lexa PRO [Radeon RX 550/550X]
        Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
        Kernel modules: amdgpu

 

Edited August 7, 2022 by amisbievre

[softworkz 3325]

I'm afraid, I can't say much more useful things. AMD has a lot of drawback in video processing and is used rather rarely with Emby Server. 

General experience is that distro-provided graphics drivers are often incomplete (Nvidia, Intel, AMD).

Specific knowledge regarding AMD is that you need amdgpu pro (like described in  "Method 3" for Ubuntu here: https://linuxconfig.org/amd-radeon-ubuntu-20-04-driver-installation).

For an explanation why AMD boards are not a good choice for video acceleration, you might also want to read this explanation/example: 

 

[amisbievre 3]

Ok... I will buy an NVidia. You should warn in your website that AMD GPU are not supported instead of saying emby is capable of using it.

Thanks for your infos.

[softworkz 3325]

Emby is in fact capable of using AMD GPUs with the required drivers, but yes - we should be more explicit in that it is a sub-optimal choice. To be honest, I wasn't even aware of the limitations regarding Debian. I was rather assuming that the same would work like is described for Ubuntu.

I sometimes whish we had a lab with an abundance of hardware and a team of testers who could find out and document all these things, but we are just very small and all invest is going into development.

I think we should create some "Hardware Buyer's Guide" article or similar with some advice on choosing optimal hardware components.

 

[amisbievre 3]

yes it could be a good point to have a hardware guide regarding the current GPU prices (even if it's lower than last year).

But the rest of emby ant it's concept are very cool and this "problem" doesn't detract this fact.

Thanks for your help.

[amisbievre 3]

Switch to an NV Quadro P2200 and it works fine.

I used this tutorial for debian : [HowTo] Nvidia hardware transcoding on OMV 5 in a Plex docker container - Guides - openmediavault