SOLVED: Hardware Acceleration Problems

[TheDreadPirate]

For tone mapping, specifically, it is VRAM intensive and having more does make a difference. Regular transcoding it doesn't make a difference.

Tone mapping only happens when your content is HDR and the client doesn't support it. Tone mapping is converting HDR to SDR.

[Frostlike15]

Okay gotcha.. Thanks for the quick reply. Is HDR even a big thing these days? How much importance should I place on having more VRAM in my purchasing decision?

[TheDreadPirate]

More and more media has HDR as an option. Eventually more displays will be HDR than not. Your phone probably supports HDR and has an HDR screen (I know my Pixel 6a does and actually displays HDR properly when using Findroid).

But, as with all hardware questions here, how many users you have dictates your hardware choices. The Arc A380 can handle 5-6 tone mapped streams, which sounds like enough for your user base IF you had more HDR content. But it sounds like you don't really have much HDR content.

If you don't have, nor plan to have, HDR content the A310 is perfectly capable. The entire Arc lineup has the same media engine and same number of media engines.

[Frostlike15]

More and more media has HDR as an option.  Eventually more displays will be HDR than not.  Your phone probably supports HDR and has an HDR screen (I know my Pixel 6a does and actually displays HDR properly when using Findroid).

But, as with all hardware questions here, how many users you have dictates your hardware choices.  The Arc A380 can handle 5-6 tone mapped streams, which sounds like enough for your user base IF you had more HDR content.  But it sounds like you don't really have much HDR content.

If you don't have, nor plan to have, HDR content the A310 is perfectly capable.  The entire Arc lineup has the same media engine and same number of media engines.

As for users... 5-6 sounds good at the same time. But if I want to support something like 10-15, would the A770 be a better choice?  As for HDR content, I suppose maybe 95% of my content is SDR and maybe 5% at best is HDR. Good to know that newer phones are HDR, I'll take that into consideration. 

I mean, if I can, I would use HDR. But I really only have one HDR TV (maybe, it's a TCL 5 series) and the rest of my screens are SDR. 

What's the limiting factor on GPU encoding for GPUs?

[TheDreadPirate]

If its 10-15 regular transcodes. ANY of the Arc GPUs can handle it. My A380 can handle ~20 transcodes without tone mapping (SDR content). You only need to get higher tier Arc GPUs if you have a lot of HDR to SDR tone mapping. Since tone mapping uses VRAM while regular transcoding does not.

The main limiting factor is the performance of the media engine itself. And there are no authoritative sources of benchmarking, AFAIK, for Quick Sync vs NVENC vs AMF.

Just anecdotal stories like this thread.

[Frostlike15]

Alright, thanks for the through explanation. I asked so much questions because I couldn't find any bench marks on it.

Yeah I guess a higher tier ARC GPU would be more future proof, but an ARC A380 would work fine.

Is it true that the best thing to do is to try and avoid transcoding?

[TheDreadPirate]

If you can, yes. Direct play is the goal, transcoding is the backup.

[Frostlike15]

Alright, thanks for the through explanation. I asked so much questions because I couldn't find any bench marks on it.

Yeah I guess a higher tier ARC GPU would be more future proof, but an ARC A380 would work fine.

Is it true that the best thing to do is to try and avoid transcoding?

Thank you so much for being so patient with me.