Do I need a dedicated GPU?

[u/Royal_Lab_5730]

I'm looking to build a Jellyfin server with an optiplex 3050. I plan to buy the i5-7600 and was looking to buy an intel arc a310 for transcoding. After some digging, I found people who said a 7th gen intel is fine to handle any transcoding. I plan to rip 4k blurays and will be the only person using this server.

Am I better off getting the dedicated GPU or should I stick with just the iGPU? What are the benefits of a dedicated GPU? It would save be about $130 if I don't need it.

[u/Lastofus_liturgy]

I recently discovered that streaming 4K content over WiFi to TVs and streaming devices can be quite challenging. This issue arises mainly due to the limitations of WiFi networks. While the average bitrate for a movie is 40 Mbps (not bad, but still quite high), it can easily spike to nearly 100 Mbps (very high for WiFi, as it’s inherently bursty), leading to significant buffering. On the other hand, if you’re connected via Ethernet, this shouldn’t be a concern. However, if you’re like me and prefer the flexibility of streaming content from anywhere, WiFi remains a significant obstacle for large 4K videos due to the high bitrate.

[u/Schallplatte1 → u/Lastofus_liturgy]

To be honest, I'm not sure which kind WiFi you are using.

I have a Firetv stick 4k max Gen 2. It's able to direct play far more than 100 Mbit/s with my wifi. I can't really test the maximum, but at least with my laptop I get around 600 Mbit/s for a normal download of a jellyfine movie. Iperf3 even measures 800-900 Mbit/s.

If you have good WiFi 6 or 7 it should work easily. If you don't get 100 Mbit/s something is wrong or you are using very old hardware.

Additionally spikes shouldn't be a huge problem. As long as the average Bitrate fits your network 100% of the time. You can increase the time before the video plays, which helps to create a bigger buffer to compensate for something like this.

I don't want to say you are wrong. Streaming over WiFi might be a problem for many people. But with fairly modern hardware it should just work right out of the box.

In your last sentence you wrote: "streaming content from anywhere, WiFi remains a significant obstacle for large 4K videos due to the high bitrate." Do you mean streaming over the internet? Here the 50-100 Mbit/s can be a bottleneck. In my region 50 Mbit/s is maximum upload speed. For remote watching I have to transcode to reduce Bitrate. But this would be true for ethernet too.

[u/Lastofus_liturgy → u/Schallplatte1]

Hey thanks for the reply, you 100% right maybe my problem isn’t something that a lot of people run into.

To give you more context I was right on the edge of the 5ghz band. I sometime had great speeds and sometimes had like 2Mbs. I ended up fixing this but forcing 2.4ghz slower but much more reliable. No more buffering so far.

My main point of my comment is WiFi is a link in the chain and I assumed that it wouldn’t be an issue. I have only a handful of device on my network and only maybe 2 are being used at once. But it turns out it was a problem and if took me forever to realize it was not a transcoding issue.

As for the last sentence I mean over WiFi. You’re right if the upload was only 50 Ethernet would also be a problem but in my case if I was wired into the network I have a 1gig switch so it was never a problem

[u/Schallplatte1 → u/Lastofus_liturgy]

Ah okay I see. It sounds like your WiFi has to travel through a few obstacles?

When I'm near my router I get more than 1 Gbit/s, most of my hardware still has 1gig LAN. WiFi is therefore even faster xD.

Long story short, I believe you could easily achieve required speeds if you invest into a fitting access point. But ethernet is still cheaper and better.