Hardware recommendation needed

[DarinM 6]

I recently installed Emby Server on my FreeBSD server and everything seems to be set up and running just fine.  I also purchased Emby Premiere because of all the hard work that was obviously put into it.

Here are the CPU specs:

hw.machine: amd64
hw.model: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G with Radeon Graphics
hw.ncpu: 12
hw.machine_arch: amd64
hw.physmem: 67922853888
Storage space - 43 TB

I'm considering getting an Nvidia card to add to the hardware transcoding abilities.  I don't need or want to spend thousands on a graphics card.  A good budget card would be good.  

I've been looking at the GTX 1660 cards.  Would one of those be sufficient or too much?  Is there something maybe a little less expensive that would work?  

Most of my data is H264 encoded and I have just a few people that might be streaming from me.

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

[GrimReaper 3308]

3 minutes ago, DarinM said:

Most of my data is H264 encoded and I have just a few people that might be streaming from me.

In that case you're already pretty covered playback-wise, but for those few odd-transcodes, 1660 (or 1650) will do perfectly fine (personally wouldn't go lower than 1050Ti/1060).

[DarinM 6]

Thanks for the recommendation.  I appreciate the help.

[RanmaCanada 345]

Could you not get a Tesla P4?  Here is the encode/decode matrix from Nvidia.  As you can see, it is unlimited.  It also doesn't need power.  It is headless though, but since you're running Linux I do not think that would be a problem.  Your onboard iGPU can handle encode and decode, though AMD is really bad at it.

[DarinM 6]

I could, yes.  However the P4 has a few problems.  The biggest of which is that it is passively cooled.  I've seen P4's easily get to 90c without proper active cooling.
I worked in a lab that did ML for a couple of years and we had to fashion special cooling for the P4 cards.  

Headless isn't an issue for me because the machine I'm using is headless.  Plus, a GTX1070 uses the same silicon as a P4, so a 1660/1650 would still be better.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/nvidia-gp104.g793

Thanks for the idea.

[tedfroop 33]

Make absolutely sure it is a 1660 chipset.  People were using another chipset and branding as 1660, performance wise it identical however it was missing the NVENC capabilities.

I kinda did just the same and got a great deal on an Nvidia 3060 card, the 4000 series cards are out so the 3000 series cards are on sale.....

Edited March 30, 2023 by tedfroop

[DarinM 6]

Thanks for the warning.  I'll make sure I get a known brand like EVGA or ASUS.