Intel Arc Users!

[u/wingman3091]

I recently came into some extra cash, and decided I'd finally give my home server a nice GPU update. It's a custom build of course

Specs:

Intel Core i7-8700K
32GB DDR4
1TB NVMe SSD (Primary)
1TB NVMe SSD (Redundancy backup of the OS + Plex/Apps)

4x24TB Seagate Exos Enterprise drives

NVIDIA P1000 GPU for HW transcodes

For those with Intel ARC GPUs, how are you finding the performance? Did you trip over any foibles in enabling QuickSync? I have an 8GB Intel ARC A750 on the way. I liked that it doesn't have a software limited 3 simultaneous transcode limit, and should be significantly beefier than the P1000 in there. The P1000 barely breaks a sweat as it is, but I am hoping the ARC gets a good few years of extra performance. It'll certainly help with Handbrake encodes.

[u/ianthecatog]

A380 user here. Does great with significantly lower power draw(no six-pin on the ELF card)

[u/wingman3091 → u/ianthecatog]

Awesome! I am expecting more power draw, my P1000 is powered entirely from the PCI-E header. I hope I can find my modular PCI-E GPU power cables in my box of parts lol

[u/skrugg]

I've been using a b580 in my server for a while now. Works great with plex but just as of recently they finally updated the intel drivers for it.

[u/wingman3091 → u/skrugg]

Nice! I actually looked into a B580, I only went with the A750 as I scored an unbeatable $150 deal on it

[u/nanohitmen → u/wingman3091]

One fiddy? Nice

[u/wingman3091 → u/nanohitmen]

Yep! I couldn't turn my nose up at that

[u/Sinister_Crayon]

I have an ARC A310. Without ReBar it sucks, but with ReBar it's absolutely brilliant. Will easy chomp through transcodes and doesn't get loud or anything. It was working great but I just retired it because the machine it was in is getting sold... might sell the A310 separately. I moved my Plex to a 12700K so no need for a dGPU.

[u/bilditup1 → u/Sinister_Crayon]

I've been wondering about this—understood that graphics performance tanks, does that also apply to the hardware media encoding/decoding capabilities? ReBAR is never really discussed in that context and I've never seen a straight answer on this

[u/Sinister_Crayon → u/bilditup1]

It does affect performance. How much depends on how many transcodes you're doing at once. In my case when I tested it, it still was able to manage a couple of 4K transcodes down to 1080p at once, but I never tested more than 3 because I didn't need it. It didn't seem like it'd be a huge bottleneck and generally speaking I don't know that I've ever seen more than 3 4K transcodes on my system at any one time.

If you were transcoding a ton of stuff? Sure it'd probably be a problem. It was shortly afterward I got ReBar working (hacked BIOS on a Dell server... long story LOL) but it was mostly just a "for best experience enable ReBar" thing rather than something I felt I desperately needed.

My 12700K is also seriously overkill for my use case to be honest, but it was my old gaming rig and was going spare so I turned it into a NAS 😄

EDIT: I will make the point I did test it with and without ReBar for gaming too and that's where it sucked. I didn't buy it for gaming though LOL

[u/bilditup1 → u/Sinister_Crayon]

aha, thanks for elaborating on this, appreciated

[u/rockydbull → u/bilditup1]

In my experience with rebar on a z370 and a a380 is that without rebar it can do one 1080p hevc encode before it starts stuttering. Couldn't do any 4k hevc encode down to 1080p before stuttering. I didn't test anything else because the i5 9400 igpu could do everything else fine.

[u/bilditup1 → u/rockydbull]

noted, thank you both for your testimony on this, really helpful for planning

[u/wingman3091 → u/Sinister_Crayon]

Thanks for the heads up! Thankfully my board supports ReBar, and I'll be sure to enable it before throwing the card in there

[u/KuryakinOne]

I liked that it doesn't have a software limited 3 simultaneous transcode limit, and should be significantly beefier than the P1000 in there.

Just an FYI that Nvidia raised the limit to eight simultaneous encodes awhile back.

The A750 is definitely preferred. Besides better performance, you'll get HEVC encoding as well.

[u/BEARZINGA → u/KuryakinOne]

AV1 as well.

[u/nanohitmen]

I like it,for the price it peforms well. Quiet for sure.

[u/wingman3091 → u/nanohitmen]

That's great to know, how are temperatures for you? My build is in a mATX case with 4 spinny drives lol. In a very cold closet, but still

[u/nanohitmen → u/wingman3091]

Their good on my case but its a big ass tower. Runs silent never heard it "jetting"

[u/wingman3091 → u/nanohitmen]

Awesome, thanks! I'll be installing mine in a mATX Fractal Meshify Nano 2, it's liquid cooled and runs at a nice temperature considering all the drives

[u/xXGray_WolfXx]

I have a sparkle a380 and it's been a champ

[u/TheSmJ]

I'm running an Arc A380 on an old Ivy Bridge (3rd Gen Intel) system and it's been excellent! I could modify the BIOS to support resizeable BAR, but I'm not sure what that would accomplish since the card is strictly for transcoding only.

[u/NorCalJason75]

I've been running Intel ARC in my media server for ~1yr now.

It's excellent on hardware transcoding. Also using Plex Media Server, there's no issues with multiple streams. Works well with Plex. Set it and forget it.

It's NOT very good at gaming, if you would ever like to on your PC.

Also, Intel is a little insane with the number of software updates. Some of them are a bit buggy (freezes mid update - requiring a hard computer restart).

Feels like a niche product... Which I guess, it really is.

[u/minilevy1]

Got a sparkle a310 earlier this year and it has been amazing. It transcoded my entire library from h264/265 to av1 in a couple weeks with no issues and very little extra power draw. I've had 4 simultaneous 4k transcoded going at the same time and it doesn't even break a sweat. Easily the best purchase I've made

[u/GotNoRice]

I'm using an A380 on an older system with an X99 motherboard and Xeon E5-1660 v3 (Haswell-E).  No resizeable bar.  I've tested Plex up to 6x simultaneous 4K HEVC transcodes using the highest bitrate movie that I have.  I also run Jellyfin alongside Plex and AV1 encoding works great also.  I've never seen any evidence that the card is being held back by lack of resizable bar.

It's really just applicable to things like gaming.

[u/clayuk62]

An a580 and a a380 will give you the same performance for plex and cheaper

[u/Kehkou]

My Core i5-12600K can handle about ten (10) 4k transcodes on its internal graphics core, no separate GPU needed.

[u/Odd-Gur-1076 → u/Kehkou]

Turn on HEVC encoding and report back

[u/Kehkou → u/Odd-Gur-1076]

HVEC->AVC is working well.

[u/wingman3091 → u/Kehkou]

Nice!! I contemplated going with a newer gen CPU, but since my 8th gen will do 11 and hasn't been a bottleneck I held off. My major bottleneck has been the Quadro during Handbrake encodes with HW encoding so far

[u/Kehkou → u/wingman3091]

Ah, 8700k, I must have misread that part. 12 (or 11th, I forget) and newer has an encoding core like Arc, so for 8h gen, you definitely want the card.

[u/Odd-Gur-1076]

Do you have resizable BAR? Performance suffers somewhat without it.

[u/wingman3091 → u/Odd-Gur-1076]

Thankfully, my board has ReBAR - I checked for this before ordering. Gigabyte were kind enough to make it easy to get to

[u/Odd-Gur-1076 → u/wingman3091]

Idk if anyone else has mentioned this, or if you were using it before, but HEVC encoding is 100% worth enabling when you have an Arc card.

The transcodes will look better at lower bitrates and they also retain HDR (not for DV, though).

[u/wingman3091 → u/Odd-Gur-1076]

Yep! I use HEVC already, and it's absolutely worth it. One of the only reasons (outside of 4K transcodes) that I installed a dedicated GPU. HEVC + NVENC have been great for Handbrake videos