Which GPU GT 1030 or GTX 1050?

[Grom8 2]

Hi

 

Im finding it hard to find solid info on GPU hardware acceleration recommendations for a server with a Pentium G4600, 12GB of ram.

 

I want to keep power consumption to a minimum and so the 1030 trumps the 1050 and also the 1030 is $100 cheaper. I'm just unsure what the performance of a 1030 card is and if it can handle streaming 4k HDR remotely and locally with no stuttering. The 1030 seems to only supports certain types of video encoding/decoding and doesn't support nvenc??? I confused on what I should be looking for and what will work.

 

Hopefully you guys know better than me, I would really appreciate the help.

 

Thanks

Grom8
 

[Luke 37214]

@ or @@Waldonnis may have some good insight. Thanks.

[Guest asrequested]

Well, if you're wanting to transcode 4k HDR, the HDR will be lost. So the colors won't be right. Other than that, I'd say go with the 1050. Give yourself a little future proofing. And be aware that you'll only be able to transcode 2 streams at any one time. For local playback, transcoding shouldn't be required, so that'll be down to your player hardware.

[Grom8 2]

Thanks for the help, I have a few questions. Why do I lose the HDR part? Why am I limited to 2 streams at a time? Lastly leaving it down to player hardware, what do you mean by this?

 

 

[Guest asrequested]

Transcoding in the server is handled by ffmpeg. HDR is metadata. For it to be used, it needs to be passed through. The present ffmpeg build doesn't support this. Ffmpeg are slowly introducing it.

 

Those Nvidia GPUs can only handle two streams.

 

When playing, if the player supports all aspects of the file, the server won't have any involvement, and the player will handle everything.

[Guest asrequested]

For playback support and transcode, this may help you understand.

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/48799-direct-play-vs-direct-streaming-vs-transcoding/

[Diedrich 355]

I went with the 1050Ti for some breathing room for future tech.

[Grom8 2]

OK makes sense, so does NVIDIA have somewhere that they list these specifications on video playback capabilities of their cards?

 

Also thanks for the link I will read it now.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Grom8

[Diedrich 355]

OK makes sense, so does NVIDIA have somewhere that they list these specifications on video playback capabilities of their cards?

 

Also thanks for the link I will read it now.

When I did my research I had found such information and I remember that there was an overwhelming reason to not go with the 1030. I don't remember the reasons and I know you would like hard evidence, but I don't remember the reasons. But just trust me that it came down to the 1050/1050Ti. I went with the Ti for the extra 2GB RAM, extra cores and it didn't break the bank like the 1060 and didn't feel like overkill paying for something I didn't/wouldn't need. Edited May 14, 2018 by Diedrich

[Guest asrequested]

OK makes sense, so does NVIDIA have somewhere that they list these specifications on video playback capabilities of their cards?

 

Also thanks for the link I will read it now.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/981372/geforce-basics/which-gpus-support-hevc-a-k-a-h-265-/

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix

[Waldonnis 148]

Thanks for the help, I have a few questions. Why do I lose the HDR part? Why am I limited to 2 streams at a time? Lastly leaving it down to player hardware, what do you mean by this?

nVidia's hardware encoding is limited to two simultaneous streams at a time on consumer cards (GeForce).  Professional (Quadro) cards aren't limited like this, although there's likely some practical limit on the hardware level because you'll saturate it at some point.

 

 

As for HDR, there are two "parts" to HDR videos - the colourspace of the video (yuv420p10le) and metadata that details the display characteristics that the file was mastered/created with.  Since professional monitors used for these purposes are frequently better than your television capability-wise, having the metadata lets the television map the colourspace/light levels within its own capabilities.  This allows content to be displayed with the same artistic intent and "balance" on your television even though it may not be as capable.  For example, there are a few monitors out there than can actually handle 10k nits, but most televisions can output 1k nits at best, so to keep the video from looking ridiculously dark from truncating the light levels, the television will map the 10k range so all "points" fall within a 1k range.  The same happens with colours, since televisions' coverage of BT.2020 is often more limited than the professional monitors used for colour grading.

 

This metadata is contained within the HEVC video stream itself inside of certain types of packets.  Last I heard, nVidia's encoding API didn't have functionality to allow this "extra data" to be added to the stream, so while it could handle the yuv420p10le colour space, the video would usually look washed out as it wouldn't contain the mastering display data and wouldn't signal the television to switch to HDR mode (thereby activating the tonemapping processing).  This may have changed recently, as I've seen some discussion from an API level about it, but I don't think that ffmpeg supports that functionality quite yet (again, could be wrong).  There is a pseudo-workaround in the wild as well that adds signaling after the fact, but works on elementary streams (.hevc files) rather than containers (like mkv/mp4) and cannot be used with "live transcoding" scenarios.  It also has a few other limitations that are a bit more technical, but it's an imperfect solution anyway.

 

Software transcoding with ffmpeg/libx265 can easily handle HDR if compiled for it, but obviously it's very slow.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Waldonnis

[Guest asrequested]

Yeah, what he said ^^

[Grom8 2]

Damn you guys are awesome, I was struggling to find concise information on this topic mainly because there was very limited use of a GT 1030. I did stumble across this https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix but I wasn't sure what it meant. I should have taken a re-peak, hahaha it makes sense now.

 

 

Thanks for the help it was very much appreciated, I will finish going through this stuff after work. Have a great day all

Grom8

Edited May 14, 2018 by Grom8

[Guest asrequested]

The emby app that is the most capable, is Theater for windows desktop.

 

https://emby.media/emby-theater.html

Edited May 14, 2018 by Doofus

[Waldonnis 148]

Oh, neato, apparently the nVidia encoding SDK does support HDR metadata now.  rigaya added support for it to nvencc not long ago, so it should be possible.

 

I'm not sure about the ffmpeg side, though.  I've been doing a series of large encodes and have to keep my ffmpeg/x265 versions identical throughout (takes a week or so to finish each file), so I haven't bothered looking at the changelog recently.

[Guest asrequested]

So that's for a full transcode? Does it need particular software?

[Waldonnis 148]

So that's for a full transcode? Does it need particular software?

 

NVEncC is a stand-alone encoder written by rigaya (link to the github repo).  It's actually quite featured, but using it is like using any standalone encoder (limited input format support, limited output container support, only does video, etc.).  I've rarely used it, but keep track of it simply because it supports options that ffmpeg doesn't with its hardware implementation and often reflects the full capabilities of the API itself.  It's the "nvenc-specific scalpel" to ffmpeg's "general Swiss Army knife".

 

As for my encodes, yep, a week for a full 2hr-ish video encode (old Ivy Bridge using a slow preset and a few options that increase analysis, so not surprising; think 0.5 fps average..lol).  I just use ffmpeg/libx265 to do it along with some scripting, but I have to chop the main file up and encode it in pieces so I can actually use my computer during my waking hours     I'm hoping I can wait for Intel's 8-core i7s to come out before upgrading since I'd benefit from the extra cores and higher single-core clocks (along with AVX2).  My typical workloads don't do as well on Ryzen, and having the QS-capable iGPU is an additional benefit...so I'm kinda stuck in the blue camp that way.  Given the age of my system, I basically have to do a whole new system build, though.  I'll also need to drop money on a new dGPU, so waiting for the new CPU and GPU releases makes sense.

[Guest asrequested]

[Waldonnis 148]

Interesting. So it's still pretty early in it's application.

 

Good Lord, that's a slow transcode. You must really want it, bad! Lol.

 

As for the new machine. We're going to require pictures!

 

NVEncC has actually existed for a while, but seems to have always been intended to be a standalone encoder rather than something that gets incorporated into ffmpeg.  Some encoding GUIs offer its use since they demux to elementary streams and make use of AviSynth/VapourSynth anyway (StaxRip does, I believe).  If you make heavy use of nvenc for non-live transcoding and want more options than ffmpeg's implementation offers, it's something I'd recommend playing with just to learn more about what the hardware can do and how to work with standalone encoders.

 

And yeah, slow transcodes.  I've hit 0.2 fps on some scenes, but it's generally 0.5 or so.  I don't mind the time, honestly.  I only really run the encodes when I'm away, sleeping, or have nothing else to do on the computer, so it's not time that I'm really missing.  Once the chunks are all done, it's quick enough to stitch them all together and mux in the audio.  I'm just happy that I can use CRF rather than 2-pass for this...saves a bunch of time.  The only thing that I want to change eventually is how I split up the files.  I want to split by "scene" using the same threshold I'm using for scenechange with x265, but it takes hours to generate the list of timestamps with ffmpeg.  I suppose I could do the split in Resolve, but meh, not as easy to automate/script.

[Guest asrequested]

That's why I asked if a particular software was required. I figured ffmpeg wasn't fully utilizing the ability. And why I said application not development. As you say, it's been around for a while, but would seem that not much actually takes full advantage of NVEncC. But it's good to know that the potential is there. I don't have any Nvidia GPUs. I've been using iGPUs, for years. Less parts, less fans.

[Waldonnis 148]

That's why I asked if a particular software was required. I figured ffmpeg wasn't fully utilizing the ability. And why I said application not development. As you say, it's been around for a while, but would seem that not much actually takes full advantage of NVEncC. But it's good to know that the potential is there. I don't have any Nvidia GPUs. I've been using iGPUs, for years. Less parts, less fans.

 

Makes sense.  I can't use iGPUs for a main display gaming-wise, and it would limit me within some packages that supports CUDA compute/acceleration (GPU rendering and 3D work).  rigaya did make a QuickSync encoder as well (link here), but I haven't gotten around to putting it through its paces (it's also included in StaxRip's batch o' tools).

[Guest asrequested]

Oh nice! I may take a look a that.

[Grom8 2]

Sorry, I have another question...

 

 

Is there really any difference/point to getting a 1050ti over a 1050? (For my purpose anyway)

 

 

If NVIDIA caps the amount of streams to two then the extra power seems wasted. Someone on reddit said their GT 1030 gets 30% when transcoding 4k (no proof but that's the best I got :/), considering on my main PC when running emby server transcoding 4k doesn't even show above 1% GPU usage. If this is the case then there SEEMS to be no point to getting a 1050ti over the base 1050 unless there is something im missing.

 

 

Thanks

Grom8

Edited May 15, 2018 by Grom8

[Guest asrequested]

Well, what's the hardest job you want it to do?

[Grom8 2]

Just 4K transcoding locally and remotely, of course its mainly the remote transcoding as I have direct play locally

Edited May 15, 2018 by Grom8