What hardware should I upgrade to support 4K 10-bit HDR HEVC?

[buck]

I currently have a server set up on an old system with a AMD FX 6300 CPU and a ATi Radeon HD 6770 GPU, running Jellyfin in Windows 10. I would like to watch movies in 4K 10-bit HDR HEVC on my playback devices, which are two separate Chromecast devices running the Jellyfin Android app. Alas, my antique hardware doesn't support this (to no surprise), and I am therefore trying to figure out what I should upgrade on this old hunk of junk to be able to play and transcode such content, and looking for recommendations from more experienced users.

Will an upgrade to a newer GPU like a Radeon RX 580 8GB do the trick (would cost me about 70 USD), or would it be beneficial to upgrade the entire system to a new platform, like a 10th or 11th gen Intel CPU with integrated graphics (about 250 USD)?

The GPU upgrade would certainly be a cheaper upfront investment, but consume more power. Afaik, the GPU upgrade would enable 10-bit HEVC decoding, according to the documentation, but not encoding. Do I need encoding support, or would decoding support suffice?

[bitmap]

Decoding is what you need. The GPU would be the minimum viable upgrade here. Encode would provide you the ability to re-encode to that format with Handbrake, ffmpeg, etc...

[buck]

Thank you for the clarification. I'm glad I asked, you just saved me a lot of money!

[bitmap]

I'm not one to dissuade somebody from upgrading their hardware, but if all you're looking for is the ability to play back HEVC HDR content, your hardware needs to decode 10-bit HEVC. Jellyfin will figure out what to encode to based on the client's requested format. In general, I see transcoded content go back out in H264, which any dGPU or iGPU worth talking about in HWA conversations will handle.