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
