nvidia-vaapi-driver VS nvidia-patch

For anyone wondering, I got hardware acceleration working (NVIDIA 1660 Super: h264, vp8, vp9, don't know why I can't get HEVC support currently) using the nvidia-driver-545 using the steps from nvidia-vaapi-driver to build from source (version: 0.0.11)

I don't think it's your fault and I don't think you're using the wrong browser.

> I should be working out the dependency story and compiling some driver from Github myself.

no, nvidia _should_ make it easier for people using the 3rd most popular desktop OS to use their hardware. It would make them more competitive against AMD and Intel, which both support hardware video decoding.

That's probably not going to happen, so the next best option is to install a package from the package manager [0]. There might be some kind of compilation needed, but in my experience that's rarely an issue (aside from time), especially if it's coming out of the package manager for a popular distribution.

> It's just not a real option for maybe 99% of PC users.

well, 99% of PC users with Nvidia hardware. It's an important distinction since this problem is specific to Nvidia. If the solution is to installing a package from the package manager, it's only as difficult as installing the browser in the first place.

I do agree there's some extra questions that may make things difficult, or unfamiliar for the vast majority of people, though. Like how is someone supposed to know they need the nvidia-vaapi-driver package anyway?

[0] - https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver#package-manag...

to be honest, pop os solved most of my problems except the hardware acceleration problem which seems like an issue with Nvidia. I am planning to try this soon. https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver/ as mentioned in the comments

RpmFusion only has v0.0.9 of nvidia-vaapi-driver although release v0.0.10 adds support for Nvidia drivers v535. https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver/releases/tag/v0.0.10

I do have one machine with the Firefox PPA rather than the snap, and that's because I've got an NVIDIA card in it and want to use an experimental library.

Note that as an nvidia gpu owner you need to do some extra backflips to make firefox use hardware decoding such as installing a custom vaapi-to-nvdec translation driver: https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver

General VDPAU vs VA-API video acceleration pains. Needing a community driver for imperfect VA-API support, that nvidia updates have broken multiple times.

Don't use VDPAU, this driver is much better: https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver

This can be patched out. https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

NVIDIA Corporation GA106 [GeForce RTX 3060] and I applied the patch here https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

> CUDA, and pretty much all optimization(hacks) done to run games better

And arbitrary limitations implemented at the driver level to force you to purchase their enterprise GPUs, see https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch#nvenc-and-nvfbc-patc...

Nvidia has no motivation to make a consumer card with lots of VRAM, that's basically the only (relevant) separator between the GeForce family and the Quadro lineup.

There are restrictions on NVENC streams with consumer cards, but that has been a solved problem for a while [0].

If they were to make a consumer card with more VRAM, it would immediately undercut their own Quadro/Tesla lineup, which cost substantially more. I don't see a reason for them to do it.

0: https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

I have never had to do the session limit bump thing from the last link. I have a 3090 as well and simply did the initial unlock, which worked fine. I would reinstall fresh drivers from Nvidia, making sure you install the newest one that is supported by the unlock tool (536.40 as of this post, the GitHub for the patch has links to the drivers - https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch/tree/master/win)

Aren't these Quadro versions. The patch here. https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch supports Quadro versions of you click on the win clickable.

Second, the GPU. The GPU is probably as important as the CPU, and in some cases more important, and when we talk about GPUs we will primarily talk about Nvidia GPUs as they are officialy supported by the Plex team. NVIDIA GPUs are important for Plex hardware transcoding due to their dedicated video encoding/decoding units, superior performance, wide codec support, improved video quality, reduced CPU load, power efficiency. They offer a powerful hardware acceleration solution that can greatly enhance the transcoding capabilities of a Plex server. It's also important to note that Nvidia GPUs require a patch to unlock the number of HW transcoding streams. Dedicated GPUs are large pieces of hardware and have their place in desktop PCs. However, they can also be used with mini-PCs by using an external GPU enclosure.

As there's no NVENC patch available (yet) for the Beta driver branch - referring to this one: https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch - which can lift the limits of HW transcoding, I was now wondering a little, as I can see 5 (hw) streams on Plex, which actually shouldn't/cannot be the case no?

I haven’t done this yet but there is a patch on GitHub that removes the limitation for consumer GPUs. Makes lower end cards more attractive for this type of work