transcoding graphics card recommendations needed

[JJakaJonas]

Hello all.

I'm working on a NAS where I run jellyfin and wanted to ad hw transcoding to my setup.

 

The short story is that I have made my NAS using a Lenovo thinkstation S30 platform.

 

I have plans of upgrade it to a xeon e5-2697 v2 and keep my 8x4GB RDIMMs in.

 

The highest card rated for my box is a Quadro k6000.

There's 2 6-pin power cables in the machine and the card I have been looking at have a support bracket there fits my machine.

And it runs ECC memory.

 

The thing is...

Is that a good card for transcoding or is it just waste of money?

I have added a list of rated cards for the machine and hope one of them on the list will be useable if the k6000 don't work to the purpose.

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, JJakaJonas said:

The highest card rated for my box is a Quadro k6000.

The thing is...

Is that a good card for transcoding or is it just waste of money?

How "good" or "bad" a GPU is at gaming or how many flops or how much VRAM it has is irrelevant for your use-case.
You are looking for HW accelerated decoding (nvdec*) AND encoding (nvenc*). *for nvidia cards.

Also, for Nvidia cards your usually look here:
https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

But Quadro K6000 is way too old to show up on that matrix... it is a 2013 GPU, GK110B on Kepler Architecture, uses 1st gen on NVENC...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVENC

It is barely capable of encoding H264 at 4:2:0 Chroma subsampling....
For decoding you can look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVDEC (spoiler, only H264).

Anyhow, if you wanna go nvidia for the GPU:
GeForce GTX 1050 is the lowest you can go if you want to be able to encode H265 (some 9*** cards can do it also, but they don't have full support and they are also a lot less power efficient, being on older architecture and larger process node: 28nm vs 16nm for 10**).
GTX 1050 doesn't require much power (75W max, thus doesn't need additional PCIe power connectors, it draws what it needs from the slot).
Looking at the S30 spec sheet

I don't see any limitations regarding PCIe slot power, x16 should provide a max of 75W.
Which is good, sometimes proprietary mobos do not fully meet PCIe spec and you might run into situations where x16 slot can't deliver full 75W... but that isn't the case here so nothing to worry about.

Lastly if you search online a bit you will find videos / comments / forum threads where people are confirming that GTX 1050 (and higher end 10**) can work in Thinkstation S30, for example:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkStation-Workstations/Thinkstation-S30-Are-Nvidia-gaming-cards-possible/td-p/3658978


PS Unless you also want AV1 encoding and decoding, no need to go higher than GTX 1050.

[JJakaJonas]

2 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

How "good" or "bad" a GPU is at gaming or how many flops or how much VRAM it has is irrelevant for your use-case.
You are looking for HW accelerated decoding (nvdec*) AND encoding (nvenc*). *for nvidia cards.

Also, for Nvidia cards your usually look here:
https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

But Quadro K6000 is way too old to show up on that matrix... it is a 2013 GPU, GK110B on Kepler Architecture, uses 1st gen on NVENC...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVENC

It is barely capable of encoding H264 at 4:2:0 Chroma subsampling....
For decoding you can look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVDEC (spoiler, only H264).

Anyhow, if you wanna go nvidia for the GPU:
GeForce GTX 1050 is the lowest you can go if you want to be able to encode H265 (some 9*** cards can do it also, but they don't have full support and they are also a lot less power efficient, being on older architecture and larger process node: 28nm vs 16nm for 10**).
GTX 1050 doesn't require much power (75W max, thus doesn't need additional PCIe power connectors, it draws what it needs from the slot).
Looking at the S30 spec sheet

I don't see any limitations regarding PCIe slot power, x16 should provide a max of 75W.
Which is good, sometimes proprietary mobos do not fully meet PCIe spec and you might run into situations where x16 slot can't deliver full 75W... but that isn't the case here so nothing to worry about.

Lastly if you search online a bit you will find videos / comments / forum threads where people are confirming that GTX 1050 (and higher end 10**) can work in Thinkstation S30, for example:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkStation-Workstations/Thinkstation-S30-Are-Nvidia-gaming-cards-possible/td-p/3658978


PS Unless you also want AV1 encoding and decoding, no need to go higher than GTX 1050.

I have tried to search on Google and found a bunch of sites but I didn't quite understand what the different things was and what they ment.

 

But thanks for clearing it up and explain it a bit.

 

I will instead go for a 1050 or there around and try that out.