Intel 12th generation Alder Lake / Hybrid CPU


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On 7/1/2022 at 6:34 AM, NightOps said:

Honestly it depends on your demands, how many users will simultaneously be running non-direct play streams, and what your current hardware is.  If transcoding is going to be seldom, then I'd go with 12th gen and wait it out.  If you have users constantly and simultaneously needing transcoded streams, then I'd go 10th gen with an NVidia card.  I'm running 2 or 3 simultaneous direct plays, and the occasional transcoding job, and my 12600k doesn't get above 50%.  I've also got a Handbrake container running software encoding on all my movies - going to throw in TV shows as soon as iGPU is fully supported (which handbrake might currently support, I just haven't tried it since 6.10.0-rc3).

10th gen doesn't need a Nvidia card.  My old system, an 8th gen pentium, could easily handle 12 concurrent transcodes on the igpu, and only met it's limits because the cpu couldn't really handle the audio transcoding.  Something an Nvidia GPU couldn't do without messing around with drivers due to the transcode limit.

 

I really regret having sold it when I built the 12400k server :(

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BTW, if anyone is interested, I just tried HW transcoding with Plex 1.27.2 and @thor2002ro's latest kernel. The container still crashes. If it matters, I'm using binhex-plexpass.

 

edit: For funzies, I tried the official Plex container and it fails as well.

Edited by flyize
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This is a little offtopic but still relevant to the issues with 12th gen CPU's:

 

What would be a solid alternative to the performance level of an 12600k in your eyes right now?

As this thread suggests, it is still highly problematic to run this generation CPU's with unraid.. Where would you go instead?

 

Lets just pretend someone really needs to upgrade this Month, no way around :)

 

relevant factors:

 

- power consumption (Germany, energy is getting unaffordable)

- price / performance

 

 

I am coming from a 10 year old quad core xeon setup with ECC Memory, but it would not be necessary to go for ECC at that point for me tbh. 

 

Setup could be Intel or AMD, as long as it is stable, i do not care either.

 

I also do not care for Hardware Transcoding, as long as the CPU can handle one 4k HDR Transcode just fine. IGPU optional, onboard graphics would also be okay.. maybe this is the solution? just disable the IGPU entirely for now?

 

Is it stable without the IGPU usage?

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Hi everyone,

I'm in the middle of changing my UnRaid server, and I went with the I7-12700.  In my old system I had a cheap NVidia card that seemed to work for some transcoding, but until now I've mostly only downloaded 720p shows.  That's mostly because I share Plex (with just one other person), and that was easier to transcode 🙂 

 

I need help to understand exactly what people are doing:

  1. Can Plex, running on UnRaid 6.10.3, use the iGPU on the 12th gen chips at all?  
    1. I saw something about only when using HDR, but I have no idea if that's correct, or how to enable/disable HDR.
  2. Are the 11th gen chips in the same boat?
  3. Is this problem only with 4K shows?  I'm messing around with those now, but I'm not sure if this problem affects every video format or just some.
  4. Is anyone is using the iGPU on a 12th gen chip at all, is it documented anywhere how they were able to do that?
  5. I've read there are kernel changes that will fix this (?), but I'm still not sure if that is an UnRaid change or a Plex change?

Sorry, I am just completely lost.

 

Thanks for your help!

Scott

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12 minutes ago, scott47 said:

Hi everyone,

I'm in the middle of changing my UnRaid server, and I went with the I7-12700.  In my old system I had a cheap NVidia card that seemed to work for some transcoding, but until now I've mostly only downloaded 720p shows.  That's mostly because I share Plex (with just one other person), and that was easier to transcode 🙂 

 

I need help to understand exactly what people are doing:

  1. Can Plex, running on UnRaid 6.10.3, use the iGPU on the 12th gen chips at all?  
    1. I saw something about only when using HDR, but I have no idea if that's correct, or how to enable/disable HDR.
  2. Are the 11th gen chips in the same boat?
  3. Is this problem only with 4K shows?  I'm messing around with those now, but I'm not sure if this problem affects every video format or just some.
  4. Is anyone is using the iGPU on a 12th gen chip at all, is it documented anywhere how they were able to do that?
  5. I've read there are kernel changes that will fix this (?), but I'm still not sure if that is an UnRaid change or a Plex change?

Sorry, I am just completely lost.

 

Thanks for your help!

Scott

I am getting ready to do the same thing. My understanding is that iGPU transcoding will still be a problem until unRaid 6.11. So I am steering clear of HW transcoding until then. Others have advised me not to spend the money on a NVIDIA card since 6.11 is near. Although I'm not sure what "near" means.

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1 hour ago, dchamb said:

I am getting ready to do the same thing. My understanding is that iGPU transcoding will still be a problem until unRaid 6.11. So I am steering clear of HW transcoding until then. Others have advised me not to spend the money on a NVIDIA card since 6.11 is near. Although I'm not sure what "near" means.

Release dates are always up in the air, but in this case the problem is already solved, it's just a matter of Lime releasing a version of Unraid with the correct kernel and ICR versions packaged.  As this is a fairly major thing in bringing on full support for 12th gen Intel processors, I expect it's going to be somewhat of a priority.  I'd be very surprised if it didn't happen (at least with RC versions) inside a couple months. 

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2 minutes ago, Wintersdark said:

Release dates are always up in the air, but in this case the problem is already solved, it's just a matter of Lime releasing a version of Unraid with the correct kernel and ICR versions packaged.  As this is a fairly major thing in bringing on full support for 12th gen Intel processors, I expect it's going to be somewhat of a priority.  I'd be very surprised if it didn't happen (at least with RC versions) inside a couple months. 

Is ICR packaged in the OS, or is it packaged within the docker (basically making it a Plex issue to include the correct ICR)?

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6 minutes ago, flyize said:

I'd love to know this too. @ich777 Is it safe to assume you know?

ICR? Is this the reconfigurable stuff from Intel?

 

I think you are talking about the firmware? Yes, Unraid ships the correct firmware for the iGPU and of course for the corresponding Kernel version.

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9 hours ago, flyize said:

I'd love to know this too. @ich777 Is it safe to assume you know?

The ICR component is part of the plex container, I'm running the linuxserver.io version with plex 1.27.2.5929.
If you open console of your plex container and enter the following:


apt-get install intel-opencl-icd

 

It will check if the ICR is up to date or not in my case it is but be aware that updating packages of dockers this way may break your container so be aware of that and be sure to have a backup.
 

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4 hours ago, DeadDevil6210 said:

It will check if the ICR is up to date or not in my case it is but be aware that updating packages of dockers this way may break your container so be aware of that and be sure to have a backup.

But isn't Plex crashing because they use some kind of proprietary FFmpeg version and some special sauce?

 

I know that Emby and Jellyfin working both just fine with Alder Lake and newer Kernels without any crashing.

OpenCL is from what I know needed mostly for HDR content and tone mapping or am I wrong about that?

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16 hours ago, Wintersdark said:

Release dates are always up in the air, but in this case the problem is already solved, it's just a matter of Lime releasing a version of Unraid with the correct kernel and ICR versions packaged.  As this is a fairly major thing in bringing on full support for 12th gen Intel processors, I expect it's going to be somewhat of a priority.  I'd be very surprised if it didn't happen (at least with RC versions) inside a couple months. 

Hi Wintersdark,

so that means that the kernel is already optimized for alder lake and we have to wait only limetech to release the new version of the software with the last kernel ?

thank you

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3 hours ago, ich777 said:

But isn't Plex crashing because they use some kind of proprietary FFmpeg version and some special sauce?

 

I know that Emby and Jellyfin working both just fine with Alder Lake and newer Kernels without any crashing.

OpenCL is from what I know needed mostly for HDR content and tone mapping or am I wrong about that?

In following the Alder Lake thread over on the Plex forums, it doesn't seem like its an FFmpeg issue. But since AL works with Jellyfin, it sure *seems* like it must be something they're doing.

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7 minutes ago, flyize said:

In following the Alder Lake thread over on the Plex forums, it doesn't seem like its an FFmpeg issue. But since AL works with Jellyfin, it sure *seems* like it must be something they're doing.

Alder Lake doesn't work with Jellyfin on Unraid, though.  Still crashes when HW transcoding.

 

Likewise, Plex on Ubuntu now has working HW transcoding. The problem is Kernel + Specific ICR version.  

 

Unraid will crash on Alder Lake if you enable the GPU even WITHOUT actually hardware transcoding.

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7 minutes ago, flyize said:

In following the Alder Lake thread over on the Plex forums, it doesn't seem like its an FFmpeg issue. But since AL works with Jellyfin, it sure *seems* like it must be something they're doing.

On the Plex forums it's never an issue with Plex or any components from them, I remember the times where Plex Tone Mapping and also transocding wasn't working with certain CPUs (I think this was around Intel 10th Gen release) and that someone figured it out that it had to do with their custom FFmpeg version and they forked it from the latest FFmpeg version added their special sauce and viola it worked out of nowhere... :D

 

Someone already posted somewhere here on the forums (can't keep track of that many Alder Lake transcoding issue threads anymore) where you can clearly see that the Plex FFmpeg is causing the Kernel Panic.

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8 minutes ago, Wintersdark said:

Alder Lake doesn't work with Jellyfin on Unraid, though.  Still crashes when HW transcoding.

8 minutes ago, Wintersdark said:

Unraid will crash on Alder Lake if you enable the GPU even WITHOUT actually hardware transcoding.

Not true on Kernel 5.18+ ;)

 

8 minutes ago, Wintersdark said:

Likewise, Plex on Ubuntu now has working HW transcoding. The problem is Kernel + Specific ICR version.  

I have to also say that Intel really messed up with the drivers for Alder Lake and some specific Kernel versions where also on other systems like Debian issues where reported, especially between 5.16 -5.17

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