GPU for Video Media Server

[Kastun]

I'm looking for a fairly cheap GPU around $100 to $150 used is acceptable. Does anyone know how many transcode streams a NVidia Quadro 4000 and Quadro 6000 support?

[Electronics Wizardy]

What are the server specs? What programs are you using?

 

What re you transcoding needs?

 

For most home users, the cpu is plenty, and Id put that money into a faster cpu.

 

Both of those are fermi gpus, no nvenc for encoding at all.

 

You can use gtx cards aswell, much better option for this budget.

[Loki0111]

Going to guess we are talking about Plex here.

 

You can go about this with Intel QuickSync or Nvidia's encoders. Plex unfortunately does not support hardware transcoding on AMD hardware, though there is a hack to get around this I don't recommend it since it is not supported by Plex.

 

Most modern GPU's have more then enough processing power to transcode a huge number of streams. The primary limiter on the Nvidia GPU's is the VRAM or video memory. Each stream depending on the resolution it is being transcoding at needs a decent chunk of memory on the card. Another side note is the GTX cards have an artificial software limiter on them to prevent more then 2-3 transcodes at a time. The Quadro line does not have any such limitation placed upon it. There is a hacked driver patch out in the wild which disables the transcode limit on those GTX cards though so they behave like Quadro's for transcoding.

 

With all the above in mind a GTX 1660 with 6GB of VRAM can transcode about 20X 1080 streams or 5X 4k streams. A Quadro 4000 can do about 7X 4k streams, a Quadro 6000 can do about 11X 4k streams. 

 

The common element is on a modern card the more VRAM the more streams you can transcode. The other thing to keep in mind is the newer the card the better the encoding supported on that card will be. The last time I looked the 1660 (6GB) was the best bang for buck in terms of the number of transcodes a new card can do.

 

https://nascompares.com/best-graphics-cards-gpu-for-4k-plex-video-transcoding/

[Kastun]

Yes this is going to be a personal plex server for upto about 10 simultaneous streams. I'm not going to be doing any 4k streams, just 1080p. I have an old AMD system with an FX 8350 processor and thats the only part that I know is in the system besides 8gb of DDR3 RAM (I don't know the speed). I do plan to upgrade thus system to socket AM4, but just want to get the server up and running for now to get a better understanding of how things work.