Hey everyone, I’m building a new server to run Jellyfin (with a few other services like Pi-hole) and I’m stuck on GPU or CPU transcoding.

My main concern is smooth 4K HDR transcoding for 1 stream. I’ve been reading mixed advice online – some people say a strong CPU with good single-core performance can handle it, while others recommend a dedicated GPU.

Should I focus my budget (~$1000AUD/$658USD) on a good CPU, or spend some of it on a dedicated GPU?

  • accideath@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The 970 works for encoding h.264 only. My recommendation: If you have a 7th Gen Intel CPU with iGPU or later, use that. Otherwise, sell the 970 and get one of these (in this order):

    • Intel Arc A310
    • GTX 1650
    • GTX 1630
    • Quadro P1000
    • Quadro T400
    • GTX 1050 Ti
    • GTX 1050
    • Quadro P620
    • Quadro P600
    • Quadro P400

    The Intel Card has the best encoder, followed by Nvidia Turing, then Pascal. I recently sold my 970 and got a 1050 Ti for the same price. Works great with Jellyfin. If you need to tone map HDR, you probably shouldn’t get anything with much lower performance than that. If it’s just some UHD to HD or h.265 to h.264 for compatibility, even the P400 will work well.

    • entropicshart@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      thanks for the tips! I am running a Ryzen 9 5950X, so it definitely needs a standalone GPU. I am going to be getting a 1070 off the kids’ computer once I upgrade them later this year, so I think I’ll just stick that into it.

      Would really like to get the seamless transcoding to work so the whole family can use it without hiccups.