Question Intel Arc A380 with a Ryzen 1700X for video encoding ?

LLA

Dec 27, 2024
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I have and old Ryzen 1700X CPU with a GT 1050 Ti GPU that seems to only encode with VLC with only 2 CPU cores instead of 8. I'm thnking of bringing it back to life with an Arc A380, if they go on sale and was wondering if it would be good for video encoding SD/near HD. Or is the Ryzen 1700X too old for VLC and should I switch to something like Handbrake to use all the cores?
 
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Huh?!
If you want to use the CPU for encoding then the GPU doesn't matter at all.

If you want to use the GPU the 1050ti has x.264 hardware support and does the encoding on the GPU, if it does use CPU it's because of some sort of bug in the code the usage on the CPU should be very close to 0%

Yes, you should use handbrake so you can choose a gpu codec and do the encodings on the gpu alone, or use choose cpu encoding and only use the CPU.

Also some codecs are limited on how many threads they can run by the size (dimensions) of the video.
 
Huh?!
If you want to use the CPU for encoding then the GPU doesn't matter at all.

If you want to use the GPU the 1050ti has x.264 hardware support and does the encoding on the GPU, if it does use CPU it's because of some sort of bug in the code the usage on the CPU should be very close to 0%

Yes, you should use handbrake so you can choose a gpu codec and do the encodings on the gpu alone, or use choose cpu encoding and only use the CPU.

Also some codecs are limited on how many threads they can run by the size (dimensions) of the video.
I thought you had to have a graphics cards that supports the codec, like h.264 or AV1 to use the codec. Didn't know you could simply choose CPU processing only and not have to worry about graphics card not having the appropriate codec. Don't suppose you know if Ryzen 1700x (8 cores) will be slower than 1050 Ti for encoding SD/near HD on handbrake for h.264 or AV1, do you? Or can you recommend a CPU only codec for an 8 core processor or is CPU only processing super slow? Was using the actual old h.264 encoding software from their website but it's old and has not been updated for years. It was much faster than VLC and used more than 2 cores for an old Intel Q6600 and Ryzen 1700x. VLC only used 2 cores on old CPU but uses 12 cores for Intel 12700 and was super fast, but I want to use my old rig too.
 
One nice thing your ryzen 1700 is on what probably a b350 or x370 board? I’d be willing to guess that if all you’re doing is encoding that you may be able to update the bios and drop a ryzen 5900x(12 core 24 thread) or 5950x 16 core 32 thread iirc) in there. I mentioned the 2 CPUs previously but you could go with an 8 core 5700x. I would guess that wouldn’t be too far behind your i7 box. The extra threads on the other 2 CPUs might even help them more but you’d need to check the power delivery setup on your board.

Don’t know a lot about encoding but if your old pc is a custom build you can likely jump 2-3 generations on your existing board.
 
One nice thing your ryzen 1700 is on what probably a b350 or x370 board? I’d be willing to guess that if all you’re doing is encoding that you may be able to update the bios and drop a ryzen 5900x(12 core 24 thread) or 5950x 16 core 32 thread iirc) in there. I mentioned the 2 CPUs previously but you could go with an 8 core 5700x. I would guess that wouldn’t be too far behind your i7 box. The extra threads on the other 2 CPUs might even help them more but you’d need to check the power delivery setup on your board.

Don’t know a lot about encoding but if your old pc is a custom build you can likely jump 2-3 generations on your existing board.
Yeah, but I already have a new rig. They just came out with new Intel 2nd gen battlemage GPU and read somewhere that Arce A380 was a good cheap encoding with new AV1 support too. Was hoping they would start price dumping gen1 sometime next year and could maybe pick one up super cheap to revitalize an old rig. My question was simply if my issues with VLC or some other encoding software, was due to my graphics card being too old and whether upgrading would allow max use of my CPU cores. Don't want to to shell out a few hundred right now for top performance, but old computer is just sitting around. VLC allows me to use all 12 cores for new 12700kf processor but I'm stuck with 2 cores for older computers even though they have 4 cores and 8 cores respective. Just wasn't sure if old graphics card was the issue. Thanks anyway.