What's the cheapest low-profile GPU for hardware transcoding?
What's the cheapest low-profile GPU for hardware transcoding?
I've got an old AMD Phenom II system in a 2U rackmount case that I want to run Jellyfin on. I need to add a graphics card so I can hook a monitor to it for troubleshooting etc., so I figure while I'm at it I ought to find something I can pass through for hardware-accelerated transcoding.
I use Linux and I prefer open-source drivers, so I've initially limited my consideration to AMD. Based on this page in the Jellyfin documentation, it sounds like I need GCN 5 (Vega) or newer for acceleration on Linux with the open-source driver, or GCN 1 or newer for acceleration on Windows with a closed source driver (not sure if that includes Windows in a VM on Proxmox?).
Needing a low-profile card really limits my options. Looking at Ebay etc., the ones with decent availability include:
- FirePro W2100 (GCN 1) (~$12)
- Radeon R5 430 (GCN 1) (~$12)
- Radeon R7 450 (GCN 1) (~$30)
- Radeon Pro WX 2100 (GCN 4) (~$35)
- Radeon RX 550 (GCN 4) (~$45)
- Radeon Pro WX 4100 (GCN 4) (~$70)
- Radeon RX 6400 (RDNA 2) (~$130)
Then I noticed a caution on the Jellyfin documentation page:
Most AMD dGPUs come with video encoders but be careful with certain models - RX 6400/6500 series don't have video encoders.
So that eliminates the only GCN 5+ low-profile card that AMD has apparently ever made, which means there is no such thing as a low-profile AMD card that both supports VA-API and has a video encoder? Is that really true that AMD went the five years between the WX 2100 in 2017 and the RX 6400 in 2022 without releasing a single low-profile card suitable for Jellyfin??
As for Nvidia, I'm starting from scratch because I haven't bought an Nvidia card in probably 20+ years. According to the Nvidia Jellyfin documentation, apparently transcoding requires the proprietary driver and a card that's Maxwell (1st gen) or better, HEVC requires Maxwell (2nd gen) or Pascal depending on bit depth, and AV1 requires really new stuff that's probably out of my budget.
Nvidia low-profile cards AFAIK include:
- Quadro K620 (~$25)
- Quadro K1200 (~$40)
- Quadro P400 (~$50)
- Quadro P600 (~$60)
- GT 1030 (~$70)
- GTX 750 (~$100)
- GTX 1050 Ti (~$100)
- Quadro P1000 (~$150)
- T400 (~$160)
- GTX 1650 (~$200)
- RTX A2000 (~$300)
TLDR: so it seems like my options are basically to get an AMD FirePro W2100 or Radeon R5 430 for $12 and resort to running Jellyfin in a Windows VM, to get a Quadro K620 for $25 and resort to using the proprietary Nvidia driver, spend way more than it's worth for anything that can do HEVC (let alone AV1), or scrap the whole CPU/mobo/RAM and upgrade to something with modern integrated graphics?
I would highly recommend that you pay the extra and get the Quadro P400. NVENC is much easier to work with and AMD's encoding quality in general is really poor in comparison. Also the Pascal cards like the P400 have the 6th gen NVENC encoder while Kepler cards like the K620 only have 4th gen so a huge quality difference there as well. And while neither can encode or decode AV1, the K620 can't decode HEVC while the P400 can. So if you have any 4K content you actually can't go any lower.
I have a 1050ti for transcoding. It rips through like 4 4k streams at once h.265 to h.264. Im sure most of the cards you listed will do the same as long as they have at least around 3-4gb video memory
as long as they have at least around 3-4gb video memory
Oooh, good to know! I was seriously considering a 2GB card.
The lowest-priced 4GB options are the Radeon R7 450 and Quadro K1200.
It depends on how many streams you will be serving at once. I run a small server with at most 5 streams at once, and my 1060 6GB is overkill. If its just you, 2GB is more than enough. If its more than just you, Id go 4GB. Although, you should just ssh into it instead of hooking up monitor with keyboard. Ssh or install something that listens on lan.