Know What Your Media Server Can Actually Handle

How many 4K streams can your server really handle? Benchmark your CPU, iGPU and GPU on identical clips, get a number you can trust, and see how your build stacks up against the whole community.

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Direct Play vs Transcoding

When a device can't play a file as-is, your server transcodes it. In software that crushes the CPU; dedicated encoding hardware serves many streams while sipping power. The real question isn't CPU speed — it's what encoder you have.

Software vs. hardware encoding

Software encoders (x264/x265) give the best quality per bit but crush the CPU and don't scale. Hardware encoders — Intel Quick Sync, NVIDIA NVENC, AMD VCN — do the job far faster at a fraction of the power, with a shrinking quality trade-off.

Benchmark your hardware in minutes

A community Docker container called Transcoding GPU Benchmark now auto-detects your CPU, iGPU and GPU, pulls down identical checksummed test clips on demand, and runs the same encode jobs on each so every result is directly comparable. 

Install

See how your server compares

Submit your run and your hardware lands on a public leaderboard alongside everyone else's, with the median, the best result, and the number of runs for each configuration. It's the quickest way to sanity-check a build before you spend a penny and maximize performance and efficiency.

View Leaderboard

Learn All About Transcoding to Maximize Your Streaming

Got the Hardware? Now Optimize Your Library

Once you know what your box can push, put it to work. Using tools like Unmanic or Tdarr automates converting your library to space-saving HEVC and can offload the jobs to your GPU, so you shrink terabytes without tying up the CPU.

Build the media server you want

Unraid runs Plex, Jellyfin and Emby, uses the hardware transcoder you already have, and grows with you.  Take it for a free spin for 30 days, no credit card required.

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