Do the terms integrated video card, on-board video card and IGPU all mean the same thing?

no

what have you looked at so far though?

@JourneymanGeek en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_card

then IGPU = Integrated Graphics Processing Unit...so same thing?

ok, so...

so...yes they are the same?

practically uhhh kinda sorta

but where it is on the machine has moved

oh ok

So in the old days - your integrated graphics chip was onboard

IGPU is on CPU, where usually "integraded/onboard" meant on motherboard..?

either its own chip or as part of the chipset

I think its only in the past 8-10 years that having your igpu on die was a thing

Ok that makes sense

and you had wierd things like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce

that's sort of what I'm wondering, did IGPU replace onboard or at least replace it by name?

its kinda fuzzy

My friend would also like to know if there's a standard definition of 'chipset'

Which they've always wondered

I was looking into it because someone on reddit claimed IGPU is good for media servers because then power isn't wasted on a video card. Is that logical?

The answer is usually "it depends"

if it's a headless server just serving media over a file share, yeah you don't need a video card

if someone is doing some really fancy transcoding (some media servers like Plex do this when they serve video) a graphics card may help with that

where the line goes from "IGPU can handle the transcode" to "dGPU is needed" is beyond my ken

@northerner yes and no

Actually the topic was Plex. Though idk...is transcoding done in CPU or GPU?

and you can also CPU transcode

@northerner ah...

see, that's a great question...

comment was "Any recent gen intel cpu with an igpu will work work great for plex. I have an i3 9100 in mine."

in SOME situations, SPECIFIC onboard video cards - like intel cards with quick sync will basically beat an integrated card in transcoding in terms of speed and efficiency.

and NVenc, if you're able to use that

and a media server isn't going to be doing anything graphically intense, unless you're running something like madvr

though that's speed at the cost of size

@northerner that's a pretty broad statement; it probably holds true in most cases

but then there's always someone who wants to watch their 4k60 videos in h265...

generally though a media center pc is designed for low power use and quietness, and a modern on die graphics solution is likely better for both

@bertieb madvr is a GPU accelerated upscaler :D

that's the other thing that's coming into fashion

"AI"-based upscaling

but generally not real-time

and if you're doing that, you know what you need and are happier twiddling bits than the av-er-age bear

yup

but in most cases, your plex server at most is transcoding to 1080p or something and outputting something an rpi could output

for those, some of the really modern GPUs have features which help accelerate that, but again we're getting off the common "I just wanna watch my videos on my teevee" theme of Plex

I mean, do you really need a 3090 to watch the latest episode of the mandalorian? :D

Hmm, I dunno, I guess I would need to ask someone who: 1) has a 3xxx series card and 2) watches The Mandalorian

Hiiii!

know anyone who fits that description..? ;-P

well, I have a 3080, not a 90, but close enough :D

@JourneymanGeek "in SOME situations, SPECIFIC onboard video cards...beat integrated" is that a typo? Didn't we just say onboard and integrated mean the same thing?

yes :D

I mean discrete :D

got it!

and quicksync is insanely efficient for transcoding. I'm told there's some loss in quality - but the dude in question works in broadcast so....

its good enough for non-government work

So it breaks down to "get enough card for your needs"

I'm interested if an rpi could be a Plex server. I think by itself...marginally. But if setup with port fowarding to be available over the internet, that's pushing it. Any one with experience?

Depends on your upstream

@northerner lots of people use it as a plex server, and the newer models are actually pretty competent

hell, they even do 4k

This reviewer said he wasn't able to transcode on rpi 4 youtube.com/watch?v=zRj9mrwISZ8

around 6:36 he said for a 1080p it buffers so much it can't really do 1 static transcode

@northerner A Pi could be a plex server yeah but it will depend on the usb 3 specification, that's it really

about port forwarding, you can setup a VPN

I avoid at all times doing transcoding on Plex

just because I got a good enough Internet that can stream 4k fine

my internet is fast

everything else I have access to on the other hand...

"On the Pi 4, the USB hub chip is connected to the SoC using a PCIe bus." raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/usb/…

and it's USB 3.0 = 5Gbit/s

Is that fast enough to simultaneously stream 2, 1080p movies?

or what did you mean it depends on the specifications, @CaldeiraG?

/dev/sda is my kingston a400 SSD and sdb1 is a seagate expansion portable 2tb

both on USB3

of course it's faster using native ports like M.2 and SATA but it will serve you good