Budget encoding dedicated machine?

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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hotsaucebg3
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:24 am

Budget encoding dedicated machine?

Post by hotsaucebg3 »

Hello, I will be building me a dedicated video-encoding machine, that will do video encoding for few hours every day(for AVI to MP4 and MKV to MP4). I need the best bang for the buck here.
I have an old machine that I don't currently use - with Intel G4600 3Ghz dual-core CPU, 8G of RAM, no GPU. Can I get a cheap old GPU that will work good with NV-Enc for around $100-$200? Which GPU would you reccomend?
Also does the CPU matter when doing encoding with NVenc?
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s55
HandBrake Team
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Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:05 pm

Re: Budget encoding dedicated machine?

Post by s55 »

Your G4600 actually supports Intel QuickSync Video. if you use the QuickSync Encoder chocies on the video tab, you can save yourself the hassle of trying to find a GPU in the current market (and likely overpaying for it too)
hotsaucebg3
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:24 am

Re: Budget encoding dedicated machine?

Post by hotsaucebg3 »

Thanks, it kinda works (actually it's G4400), but it's still quite slow for me, around 90fps of encoding speed.
I could get a GTX 750TI cheap, or a semi-broken gtx 1060 6G(with screen display artifacts/issues, not sure if it could do encoding).
Or is there a CPU that could get me around 250-300fps encoding speed? On my work PC I have i5 11600k but I don't wanna hammer it.
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s55
HandBrake Team
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Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:05 pm

Re: Budget encoding dedicated machine?

Post by s55 »

GTX 750 is a non-starter.

1060 probably won't be much faster than what you have as the CPU will be used for decode and thus, bottleneck it.

Can you post a current encode log. We might be able to get a little more performance out that existing rig by tuning the settings. (i.e. disabling unneeded filters)
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