2023-07-07, 03:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 2023-08-04, 05:40 PM by Host-in-the-Shell. Edited 7 times in total.)
I'm replying to my own thread again instead of making another edit to my previous post just to let anybody know out there that if you're considering getting an Arc A380 for your jellyfin server, it's totally worth it.
I'm taken aback by the sheer quality of the encodes, and now transcoded playback looks phenomenal. Hell, their implementation of VPP Tone mapping looks fantastic to me. Granted I'm not an expert on colors, but it seems almost indistinguishable to me to the way my 4k TV applies HDR to video.
I did had to jump through some hoops to get it working, since my server is currently on Debian 12 like I mentioned before. What I did was pull kernel 6.3.7 from Sid and the intel-opencl-icd package. EDIT: Actually, that wasn't needed, as they are the same in Bookworm and Sid; so just reinstalled from Bookworm now. All is needed is the kernel. I know, I know... "Don't break Debian" but I made a full system image backup before doing any of those changes, which I backed up to three different devices in case anything goes wrong. Even if things break beyond repair on the OS side, it doesn't really matter, since I'm only hosting jellyfin and pi-hole in that system, so nothing critical. All my important stuff like nextcloud, my website and git repository are all on a separate box where I would never pull anything like this.
I also had to update the motherboard's BIOS in order to get resizable bar working for the gpu, and had to pull firmwares from the Linux repository directly Pull firmwares from Linux repository directly as per jellyfin's documentation, since newer intel hardware requires that.
EDIT 2: I also forgot that you have to configure ASPM on the motherboard's BIOS, which now I've done. D'oh.
But by God, was it all worth it. The speed, great price and functionality alone are fantastic perks, but it's the quality of the playback, particularly when transcoding, that steals the show.
If you don't want to jump through hoops like I did, you can always install Ubuntu Server 23.04 (in the alternative downloads section); it comes with kernel 6.2 out of the box and they advertise arc support specifically.
I'm taken aback by the sheer quality of the encodes, and now transcoded playback looks phenomenal. Hell, their implementation of VPP Tone mapping looks fantastic to me. Granted I'm not an expert on colors, but it seems almost indistinguishable to me to the way my 4k TV applies HDR to video.
I did had to jump through some hoops to get it working, since my server is currently on Debian 12 like I mentioned before. What I did was pull kernel 6.3.7 from Sid and the intel-opencl-icd package. EDIT: Actually, that wasn't needed, as they are the same in Bookworm and Sid; so just reinstalled from Bookworm now. All is needed is the kernel. I know, I know... "Don't break Debian" but I made a full system image backup before doing any of those changes, which I backed up to three different devices in case anything goes wrong. Even if things break beyond repair on the OS side, it doesn't really matter, since I'm only hosting jellyfin and pi-hole in that system, so nothing critical. All my important stuff like nextcloud, my website and git repository are all on a separate box where I would never pull anything like this.
I also had to update the motherboard's BIOS in order to get resizable bar working for the gpu, and had to pull firmwares from the Linux repository directly Pull firmwares from Linux repository directly as per jellyfin's documentation, since newer intel hardware requires that.
EDIT 2: I also forgot that you have to configure ASPM on the motherboard's BIOS, which now I've done. D'oh.
But by God, was it all worth it. The speed, great price and functionality alone are fantastic perks, but it's the quality of the playback, particularly when transcoding, that steals the show.
If you don't want to jump through hoops like I did, you can always install Ubuntu Server 23.04 (in the alternative downloads section); it comes with kernel 6.2 out of the box and they advertise arc support specifically.
Server specs => OS: Debian 12 | GPU: Arc A380 | CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X | 64GB RAM | 56TB
