I was having some dropped frame issues on my PC, and my phones video is pretty much unusable so I figured its probably a lack of hardware acceleration. Is it worth it to buy an Intel A380 which I’ve found for $120, or is it not worth it? For reference I currently have an i5 8600k and 16gb of RAM running Ubuntu Server headlessly.
I have an A380 running in my home server which runs Arch Linux with kernel version 6.4.6. I’ve had the card since since October 2022, so I’ve seen my share of “issues” with it, especially because my Jellyfin server runs inside of Docker and thus adds additional layer of complexity / things that can go wrong.
Having said that, for $120, BUY IT. It’s seriously one of the better cards are out there at that price. Previously I had an RX 550 (for which I paid about €75) and the A380 runs circles around my old RX550.
When I initially got it, I had some issues with is. Not surprising, early adopter and all. But the drivers are pretty rock stable nowadays and new features are being added constantly. The latest release of the Intel Media Driver added support for encding HEVC 422 and improved performance for HDR tone mapping.
With regards to maximum streams, I am currently able to get a transcoding limit of 4 streams from H265 10bit (1080p) to H264 and still have some horsepower left over.
It’s even so stable and pleasant to use, I am genuinely considering getting an A750 for my desktop.