Plex HW transcoding on Radeon 680M (Minisforum UM690)

[eliminyro]

Hi,

 

I have been looking for a small machine for my server, and the UM690 looks suitable for most of my services.

However, I am not confident enough in its capabilities, in regards to HW acceleration for video transcoding, to finally hit the purchase button.

Perhaps there is someone who owns the device and can shed more light on this?

Is it safe to buy or should I stick to Intel’s QuickSync?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Kilrah]

No support for AMD from Plex or the other major solutions, stick to Intel

[MonkeyBomb]

6 hours ago, eliminyro said:

Hi,

 

I have been looking for a small machine for my server, and the UM690 looks suitable for most of my services.

However, I am not confident enough in its capabilities, in regards to HW acceleration for video transcoding, to finally hit the purchase button.

Perhaps there is someone who owns the device and can shed more light on this?

Is it safe to buy or should I stick to Intel’s QuickSync?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

If transcoding is important to you then Intel QuickSync is hard to beat. Nvidia cards do a decent job, but QuickSync on the 12th and 13th gen Intel's is really good.

 

I've had 8 4k to 1080 transcodes and handle it no issues, my previous P2200 would start having issues at 4-5

[eliminyro]

6 hours ago, Kilrah said:

No support for AMD from Plex or the other major solutions, stick to Intel

Hey @Kilrah,

 

Well, their page states something along the lines that it could work, just without any guarantees.

 

I know a couple of other models of AMD-based NUCalikes that do support transcoding. Just can’t find anything on the last gen.

 

Figured, I’d try my luck by asking.

 

17 minutes ago, MonkeyBomb said:

 

If transcoding is important to you then Intel QuickSync is hard to beat. Nvidia cards do a decent job, but QuickSync on the 12th and 13th gen Intel's is really good.

 

I've had 8 4k to 1080 transcodes and handle it no issues, my previous P2200 would start having issues at 4-5

Hey @MonkeyBomb,

Thanks for sharing.

Although, I would really like my cores to be the same. I am not partial to the idea of juggling between performance and efficiency cores when it comes to VMs and containers.

 

I have a water cooled A4000 doing this job right now. It works fine, better even. I can probably fit like 20 simultaneous streams, and it won’t break a sweat. The issue is the size of the entire system, and the fact that A4000’s air cooler sucks (or rather, doesn’t). I’m looking for an option to downsize a bit without losing much in the CPU department. And the UM690 looks good for that.

[eliminyro]

So, while I was contemplating buying UM690, UM790 Pro was released.

I’ve decided to risk it and purchased the new one.

While AMD GPU drivers are an absolute mess, and I couldn’t set up GPU passthrough (despite there being the guide for it), hardware transcoding works for Plex just fine.

Perhaps, someone else could find that useful.