[arch-general] PC build for hardware video acceleration

[Maxime Gauduin]

On Fri, 2019-07-19 at 13:00 +0300, L. Rose wrote:
> Dear community,
> 
> I want to build a new CPU-focused Arch Linux PC. No requirements for
> GPU, except for H.265 4K decode, in decent profiles (whatever that
> means).
> 
> What hardware is best supported by libraries like VA-API and VDPAU?
> Are there other relevant libraries? Which libraries are still
> maintained and up-to-date, which are open source?
> 
> I see three options right now:
> 
> 1. High-end Intel CPU (e.g. i9-9900K) w/ integrated HD 630 GPU, or
> 2. CPU w/o iGPU (e.g. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2920X) + dedicated, low-
> end AMD GPU (e.g. Radeon RX 560)
> 3. CPU w/o iGPU and low-end NVidia GPU (e.g. GTX 1050)
> 
> I couldn't find out which setup works best using the wiki and other
> sources. Maybe anyone could point me to the right direction? What
> hardware is recommended for good H.265 4K playback on GPU?
> 
> Thanks in advance, kind regards,
> 
> L.

Hi there,

I can vouch for option 3, and am pretty confident option 1 will do as
well. I only used AMD at a time where their driver was absolutely
terrible so I can't say for option 2.

Got a Xeon paired with a 1050 which does x265 4K HDR effortlessly,
you'll want to use the binary blob paired with NVDEC if you go that
route.

For option 1 you'll want to use VAAPI paired with the recent intel-
media-driver, should tackle the workload just fine as well.

FYI VDPAU is pretty much dead, you can forget about it.

Cheers,
-- 
Maxime