Add NVIDIA card to old server (AMD) to take advantage of hw encoding?

Long time Plex user here from beta days. Have not kept up with all the latest developments, but looking to get into some 4k media and its time to update.

I’ve got an older AMD based server that obviously doesn’t support QuickSync for hardware transcoding. Is it as “simple” as adding a capable NVIDIA graphics card to step into this world? Something like a GTX 1650 appears to support HEVC 10-bit which is all I’d need for the foreseeable future based on initial research.

If I can avoid migrating to a whole new platform that would be nice. Thanks for the help.

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I would highly recommend adding and external QuickSync transcoder instead. Adding a GPU to an old PC will not yield good results, and IMO is a waste of a perfectly good GPU.

My understanding is that for less than it would cost to buy the GTX, you can get a small quicksync box, and the dedicated box would be able to run >20 streams without breaking a sweat, and do it better than adding a video card to your current server would.

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Just clarifying, 20 transcodes* (streams is a general term).