troyhough 57 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Hi all, My current server (i7-3770 @ 3.4 GHz, 16gb ram) appears to be running low on horsepower. It's only able to transcode 1 4K stream at a time (CPU is slammed at 100%). I was thinking that with 4K gradually becoming the new norm, including ATSC 3.0 OTA coming very soon, I should start thinking about a new Server. Anyone have any specific suggestions? Best bang for the buck is good, however I'm not against spending a little more on something that is more energy efficient that will pay itself back for being on 24/7 over time. The Intel Nuc's look appealing. Are they any good? Overpriced? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammy 735 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 I am very pleased with my Ryzen 3700x build. AMD is with best bang for the buck right now $/Core by a long shot. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troyhough 57 Posted February 28, 2020 Author Share Posted February 28, 2020 (edited) I am very pleased with my Ryzen 3700x build. AMD is with best bang for the buck right now $/Core by a long shot. I want something that has some kick-ass transcoding power. What am I looking for specifically? @@Luke @@softworkz ??? Edited February 28, 2020 by troyhough Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammy 735 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Define "kick ass"! LOL https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/79618-help-me-spend-some-money/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3334 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 I want something that has some kick-ass transcoding power. What am I looking for specifically? @@Luke @@softworkz ??? Either a system with a recent Intel CPU or one of the latest Nvidia GPU boards. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troyhough 57 Posted February 28, 2020 Author Share Posted February 28, 2020 latest Nvidia GPU boards. Would this be for Hardware acceleration? From my testing, hardware acceleration has been . Could be because of my system. So with a newer Intel CPU AND Nvidia GPU, i should be rockin' and rollin'? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kikinjo 162 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 If it is in your budget, i recommend Intel® Xeon® E-2176G, very good gpu and 6 cpu cores for everything else :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troyhough 57 Posted February 28, 2020 Author Share Posted February 28, 2020 Define "kick ass"! LOL https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/79618-help-me-spend-some-money/ Hey @@Sammy do you mind sharing the components you got? Also, do you enable hardware acceleration? If so, what difference does it make on the CPU? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammy 735 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Ryzen 3700x CPU GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X MoBo EVGA Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB hacked driver Corsair 16Gb DDR4 3000 RAM Intel m.2 1Tb drive. I enable h/w transcoding in Emby. This system doesn't break a sweat with Emby and BlueIris Security Cam PVR running in the background. CPU under 10% most of the time. GPU does hit 50% up to 100% at times but Emby falls back to software nicely. HandBrake in MCEBuddy will hit 60% on the CPU when transcoding 4 simultaneous recordings ts/MPEG2 to mkv/HVEC with it set to only use 4 cores / 8 threads to leave overhead for Emby and BlueIris. Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Hardware acceleration is a bit like drinking caffeine. Yeah, you may get your stuff done quicker, and damn you feel like a rockstar and unkillable....but the end result is probably not as good as you could have done. But hey, you got it done, right!?!?! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troyhough 57 Posted February 28, 2020 Author Share Posted February 28, 2020 Hardware acceleration is a bit like drinking caffeine. Yeah, you may get your stuff done quicker, and damn you feel like a rockstar and unkillable....but the end result is probably not as good as you could have done. But hey, you got it done, right!?!?! Ryzen 3700x CPU GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X MoBo EVGA Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB hacked driver Corsair 16Gb DDR4 3000 RAM Intel m.2 1Tb drive. I enable h/w transcoding in Emby. This system doesn't break a sweat with Emby and BlueIris Security Cam PVR running in the background. CPU under 10% most of the time. GPU does hit 50% up to 100% at times but Emby falls back to software nicely. HandBrake in MCEBuddy will hit 60% on the CPU when transcoding 4 simultaneous recordings ts/MPEG2 to mkv/HVEC with it set to only use 4 cores / 8 threads to leave overhead for Emby and BlueIris. Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk Do I need a GPU (other than on-board graphics) if I don't plan on enabling Hardware Acceleration? Would there be any benefit in having one for any other reason? I use the server strictly for Emby server and Plex (for DVR). Will probably move away from Plex completely when I figure out commercial ripping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3334 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 (edited) Hardware acceleration is a bit like drinking caffeine. Yeah, you may get your stuff done quicker, and damn you feel like a rockstar and unkillable....but the end result is probably not as good as you could have done. But hey, you got it done, right!?!?! I agree with what you said about caffeine, but encoding quality is not a matter of sw vs. hw encoding (at the bare bottom, 'sw' encoding is still performed by a cpu which is hardware). Instead, the resulting quality depends on the codec implementation (no matter how it's being executed) and the encoding configuration parameters. @ .- Only some of us know that you're having some multi-dozen-core cpu which allows you to do transcoding without needing to use hw acceleration, but many readers don't. And I think for those who don't, such statements can be a bit confusing. It sounds like there was a choice while there actually isn't any as long as you don't have some monster cpu. Another thing to consider is that CPU transcoding is ineffective and a waste of energy. You let a significant amount of cpu cores work on a task that could also be performed by a specialized asic (either on the GPU/CPU die or separate) that is a lot less complex than a cpu, consumes a fraction of the energy and can still do it faster. Edited February 28, 2020 by softworkz 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Yeah, there is definitely an argument for using GPU acceleration. Of course it's more efficient, they are purposefully designed for the task. The one thing that I really don't like is the instability. You never know if a new driver will break functionality. With CPU, not an issue. Don't some of the GPUs have their own codecs hard coded? I always thought that Quick sync was that way. And not take instruction from ffmpeg? Am I wrong about that? I know through d3d11 and vaapi there other options, but native QS??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 But what you're saying is that I need to be a responsible adult and give a balanced opinion of the available options, factoring in use cases. Adulting is hard.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3334 Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Yeah, there is definitely an argument for using GPU acceleration. Of course it's more efficient, they are purposefully designed for the task. The one thing that I really don't like is the instability. You never know if a new driver will break functionality. With CPU, not an issue. I have rarely seen that a new graphics driver breaks functionality - except last year when Intel migrated to the DCH driver architecture. From my point of view, a much harder part is to detect and evaluate the capabilities of less than latest hardware. Don't some of the GPUs have their own codecs hard coded? I always thought that Quick sync was that way. And not take instruction from ffmpeg? Am I wrong about that? I know through d3d11 and vaapi there other options, but native QS??? Codecs are usually neither hard-coded nor even being run by the hardware in an 'autonomous' way but rather controlled by some software implementation (often named "driver" even though it's more an addition to the real driver.) In the world of video en- and decoding, (similar things apply to other areas), the computing requirements can be reduced to a rather small number number of mathematical core operations that need to be executed over and over again in many situations and variations. Such operations are often called "primitives". In many cases this is about leveraging SIMD (single instruction multiple data) capabilities of the harware - we all know the x86 CPU extensions like MMX, SSE, etc. but there are other 'primitive' yet a bit more complex operations as well, for example the Discrete Cosinus Transform (DCT), which is an elementary building block of many video coding standards. Those 'primitive' operations are finally fulfilled by actual hardware implementation - sometimes fixed, but sometimes the hardware even allows to upload primitive logic dynamically. In case of QuickSync, the actual higher-level implementation of encoders and decoders is implemented in the 'libmfxhw64.dll' library which is delivered as part the of the graphics driver.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 That's very interesting. Yes, I remember the x86 stuff. So if the codec is in the 'driver', why then do the older GPUs not support some of them, such as HEVC. There must be something in the hardware that allows for their use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3334 Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 But what you're saying is that I need to be a responsible adult and give a balanced opinion of the available options, factoring in use cases. Adulting is hard.... I'm actually not a climate guy, I like overpowered devices and exaggerating on useless but cool or funny things and adulting is a word I've never heard before. ;-) But what I find increasingly annoying is that there are users asking questions or for some kind advice, who have done some random reading in the forums before - where not all statements are always correct, with the consequence that they do no longer believe in the answers they're being given, not even after the 5th repetition. And that in turn is the reason why I'm trying (- a little bit at least -) to rectify, reduce or remove misinformation (or ambiguous information) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3334 Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 That's very interesting. Yes, I remember the x86 stuff. So if the codec is in the 'driver', why then do the older GPUs not support some of them, such as HEVC. There must be something in the hardware that allows for their use? The drivers for older generation cpu's are getting minimal updates only as long as bigger updates are avoidable. The libmfxhw64.dll from those drivers only gets a new code signature but there's no more work done on them. Of course there are also changes from generation to generation to the "primitives" I named. Some newer features might not be easy to implement without those new middle-ware functionality. Or it might turn out that it would be too slow, - or Intel just doesn't want to invest the money... after all, I don't know but probably one of the things I mentioned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troyhough 57 Posted February 29, 2020 Author Share Posted February 29, 2020 So @@softworkz and others, if I got a new badass Intel Zuperzillion core CPU, is it really worthwhile to get a new sweet Nvidia Vid card to go with it, even if a monitor isn't even connected to it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3334 Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 So @@softworkz and others, if I got a new badass Intel Zuperzillion core CPU, is it really worthwhile to get a new sweet Nvidia Vid card to go with it, even if a monitor isn't even connected to it? No, that shouldn't be required. Comparing Intel QuickSync vs. Nvidia NVENC/NVDEC performance is very different from a comparison of 3D capabilities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troyhough 57 Posted February 29, 2020 Author Share Posted February 29, 2020 No, that shouldn't be required. Comparing Intel QuickSync vs. Nvidia NVENC/NVDEC performance is very different from a comparison of 3D capabilities. So to confirm. Sweet Intel CPU, large fast ram, SSD would be a solid choice. No additional video card necessary? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3334 Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 So to confirm. Sweet Intel CPU, large fast ram, SSD would be a solid choice. No additional video card necessary? Correct! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightsout 144 Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 HW acceleration on Intel CPU's is actually pretty impressive for just being an iGP. The reason I like to have a GPU is because it free's up the CPU to do other things, slammed cpu=sluggish system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softworkz 3334 Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 HW acceleration on Intel CPU's is actually pretty impressive for just being an iGP. The reason I like to have a GPU is because it free's up the CPU to do other things, slammed cpu=sluggish system. QuickSync hardware acceleration does not consume CPU resources. Hw acceleration is provided by a separate unit/chip that is included in the CPU.. Transcoding will still require CPU resources for audio conversion or copying video data - but that's the same when using a separate GPU board. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 As always @softworkz, you are a font of knowledge 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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