Howdy,

I'm struggling badly with trying to resolve my buffering and other issues with Plex, Infuse, and Jellyfin. A few months ago, I got an Intel Arc A380 for my server to convert videos to AV1 after reading so many awesome things about it. The space savings have been incredible, but the transcoding and playback are crippling. For now, I'll focus on Plex.

Setup

I've installed the required plugins and have alternated between adding a new device and the extra parameters to get Plex to recognize the graphics card; however, I continue to have consistent issues across devices both on and off my network. Currently, I'm passing it via extra paramteter. You can see via the GPU attachment, that Plex is trying to use the Arc but buffers and stutters non-stop with 4K content.

On-Prem

At home, I'm using Apple TV's that are hardwired to the network and you can see in the screenshots attached that it consistently buffers and stutters with 4K content. I've toggled off subtitles, forced lower quality, changed audio tracks, etc. literally nothing I have done works. I tried transcoding to RAM to see if that would fix things but it weirdly seemed to make things worse (although that could be a mistake on my part). And this happens for Jellyfin and Infuse as well. Oh, animated movies also look terrible now too, which never happened when just the processor was handling things. Weirdly, 1080p content works flawlessly.

Off-Prem

Other users external to my network are having issues as well using Roku's. This is for non-4K content. Example: someone is trying to watch a 1080p TV episode of MacGyver and the audio doesn't align at all, but I can play the file fine locally. Another user can't stream another 1080p show at all even though the audio plays before sputtering out. It eventually stops and says the server can't be reached.

The whole thing seems plagued and I just don't know what to possibly try at this point, so I'm hoping someone can offer me some suggestions. I do have an Arc B series card, but I'm waiting to see what the official releases look like before considering upgrading to it.

Seriously, any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated. I've Googled, used AI, scoured this forum, Reddit, and other places and just don't know what else to attempt at this juncture.

Cheers,

Andrew

Edited March 15Mar 15 by amagician
Added more pics for reference

Hello Amagician,

I'm interested by your topic, cause I plan to add an Intel Arc GPU to my setup (to run LLMs).

I actually transcode using the integrated UHD 750 gpu of my Core i9 CPU. (It works very well)

Just a few comments as I can't really compare:

• You are using i915 driver that don't looks optimal with Arc cards, XE should be preferable, Unraid users are waiting for next Unraid 7.3 release which includes a new kernel with hopefully full support for Arc cards

• You didn't specified a temporary folder for transcoded files

• I saw a post on this forum saying that he had to use the :plexpass docker image instead of :latest to get hardware transcoding support (I really doubt here cause I'm not using this image and hw transcoding is working on my setup)

• You are talking about an Arc B card, support for it was just added in latest Plex release 1.43.1.10576

Keep us updated.

Do you finally found a solution ?

You may find this one interesting : https://product.unraid.net/p/7-2-3-intel-arc-pro-b50-discrete-gpu-works-slower-throttles

Your buffering issues are likely network related not plex/GPU related. The Roku is direct playing which means the GPU is not involved at all. Entirely disk read speed and network driven

Also you have a intel i5-14500 which has an iGPU built in, not sure why you added an Arc GPU when they do the same thing. This is beside the point.

You should also increase the throttle buffer from 60 seconds to at least 120 seconds or more, I prefer 300 seconds

For reference Ive been using an A310 arc gpu w/ 4k content.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by MowMdown

16 hours ago, prune said:

You may find this one interesting : https://product.unraid.net/p/7-2-3-intel-arc-pro-b50-discrete-gpu-works-slower-throttles

Not relevant in this case. A380's are well supported in the linux kernel. The new B-Pro series are not.