Plex GPU Comparison: iGPU vs Arc A380 vs RTX A400

Whats the best GPU for Plex? In this video I compare 3 GPUs along with a CPU to see what the best option is and what the different quirks and issues are with these GPUs on different OSs with different media.

Hopefully this video was interesting to you. Let me know if there are other Plex or other transcoding tests to run.

Youtube seems to have auto linked the products and I get commissions if you buy them. The a400 seems way over the price I payed for it, but let me know if there are issues and I can remove the links.

00:00 Intro
00:52 GPUs I'm comparing
04:18 Testing methodology
06:50 Results
12:34 Other differences between GPUs
13:42 My recommendations
15:52 Conclusion

[hustensaftvernichter]

I only bought the A380 by Intel because I couldn't quite afford the A380 by Airbus.

[awesomearizona-dino]

Intel 770 integrated graphics is a transcode beast. Thanks for this comprehensive test.

[lastsonofthewest]

Great video. I ran a similar test using Plex on CachyOS (Arch) and an A770, A400 and the iGPU on an Intel 265K, all on Taichi Lite, Z890. Plex detected the Quadro card properly, and transcoding did occur, albeit, same as you, the iGPU was the clear concurrent transcode leader. This really surprised me! Don't have any other Amprere cards lying around, and still scratching my head. The Intel A770, 16GB, dGPU, did love H.265 transcoding to H.264 though. Only place it outperformed. I would gather, the problem is the PLEX transcode engine/code. Will try on Jellyfin next weekend, my wife wanted to kill me for "nerding on the weekend."

[prjectSkyneT]

I have an Intel ASRock Challenger A380 on my Plex server. The Plex server is installed as a Proxmox Ubuntu Server container via the tteck Helper-Scripts. Hardware transcoding is running fine on the latest Plex server stable release. Transcoding with HDR tone mapping as well as subtitle burn are working as well.

[Kclerie]

This is an extremely informative video. Working on my DIY Plex/NAS Server as we speak. 😊

This seems to be the video I was looking for!

[millepille]

Great comparative review! As for why the iGPU performed better in some instances it's probably due to quicksync being extremely efficient in plex for hardware trancoding.

[jobbies]

You're videos are awesome dude thanks

[Zoey_yea_boom]

I moved my Plex Server to a HP Mini with the 6500T and the transcode performance on the iGPU is excellent for something that uses very little power and alot of people connecting to it.

[DavidImrie]

Thanks for your videos. You really helped me get my proxmox home server up and running. I'm currently using a 10th gen I5 nuc I rescued from a scrap pile as my server, which was actually an upgrade from my hp gen 8 microserver. It seems to handle any h265 and covers the 1-2 transcodes I'm likely to need fine. As I'm getting short on disk space I'd love to explore av1 encoding. But it's such a mine field, intel ark is a bit lacking on igpu info. Wouldn't it be nice for all the Plex servers out there if someone made transcoding focused cards.

[ThatDude]

Great video. Thanks for all the hard work!

[mattybbg]

Important questions, which one did that cat prefer? Was the sniff test done in 720p or 1080p?

[snnacks]

Excellent video. Anyway you could do this test again with the new HEVC encoder in Plex?

Also, maybe even try it out with the new iGPU in the Core Ultra 200S processors. Thanks!

[sinisterpisces]

Great video. As costly as gaming GPUs have gotten now, seeing these cards benchmarked for non-gaming (Plex) use is wonderful.

It's actually really nice to see how well the 12th+ generation iGPUs perform for Plex transcoding. It's nice to think that, for once, you don't have to go out and get an add-on card (if you even have a PCIe slot) to do the thing. It's rare in modern computing just to have random excellent extra functionality just sitting there.

(And I'm not just saying that because this video makes me feel a lot better about my i7-12700T and i5-1235U* Proxmox nodes.)

* Well, the 12700T has the UHD 770 you tested. The 1235U has … something with fewer execution units and a confusing name. (Xe … something something.) But still. I feel even better about having jumped into this when 12th gen made the most sense to build with. I wasn't even planning a Plex server at the time.

[jothain]

Any plans on making efficient and cheap Proxmox setup(s) on "normal" pc hardware in future? Would be interesting to hear your take on components as hell man, you're by far the best source for stuff like this.

[briandoty]

This is great, thank you!. I would also love to see this test running Truenas scale running plex under a docker with Pass-Through GPU enabled 😁

[hafenauer]

I'm surprised dedicated GPUs didn't do better. I'm using N100 mini PC with Jellyfin. QuickSync enabled, Tone Mapping enabled. I just tried 4K HDR to 10 Mbps SDR 1080p transcoding and it showed 86 FPS, which roughly matches what you got out of your iGPU on 12900K (3 concurrent streams). With so many variables, it is hard to test these things, I imagine.

[Stream]

I had a 10700t 1l pc and now I have a 12700t 1l pc. So I went from a uhd630->uhd770. The difference is amazing. I now have a 1l pc with a 6 bay jbod enclosure and now I think im set for 4-5 years on the cpu side

[andreiindreies]

Thank you for review. Can you try with jellyfin and display playback info and card usage. This would give us better way to understand and interprate the results.

[xXNimrodXx]

Thankjs for the test, now a radxa x4 is the best alternative for me regarding transcoding, and its even cheaper thatnthose dedicated gpus and power consuption might even be better @5 watts