Worried about AMD VA-API

[KDropZ]

I plan to get myself a mini-pc with a AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS and use it with VA-API (and no coral or anything). I read that VA-API is way worse than QuickSync and that VA-API can have some issues with Frigate (to be fair, some of those posts are a bit older). Should I consider getting a system with intel CPU instead? I'm just worried to spend money on something that isn't usable or that could be alot better if I chose a different architecture.

[inkeep-ai-assistant[bot]]

AMD VA-API is officially supported in Frigate for hardware-accelerated video decoding. (1)

AMD Configuration

You'll need to set the driver environment variable and use the VAAPI preset: (1)

ffmpeg:
  hwaccel_args: preset-vaapi

(1)

Add the environment variable LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi to your docker-compose file. (1)

VAAPI supports automatic profile selection, so it works with both H.264 and H.265 streams automatically. (1)

Considerations

The documentation doesn't indicate AMD VA-API is "worse" than Intel QuickSync—both use the preset-vaapi approach for automatic codec handling. (1) Intel does offer additional QuickSync-specific presets (preset-intel-qsv-h264, preset-intel-qsv-h265) as alternatives, but VAAPI is the recommended preset for most Intel generations as well. (1)

For object detection without a Coral, you could use the OpenVINO detector, which works on most modern AMD CPUs (though this is officially not supported by Intel). (2) However, the recommended hardware guide specifically highlights Intel-based systems like the Beelink EQ13 with N100 CPU for their efficiency and compatibility with various AI accelerators. (2)

If you're concerned about maximizing compatibility and having more detector options (OpenVINO on GPU, Intel NPU in future versions), an Intel system would give you more flexibility. But AMD VA-API should work for video decoding—the main limitation is on the detection side if you want to use the integrated GPU for inference.

📚 Sources:

1. Video Decoding
2. Recommended hardware

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[NickM-27]

VAAPI works great on AMD, (and Intel). The bigger problem with AMD is that iGPUs for object detection are much worse with ROCm. Intels OpenVINO gives much better object detection stability and performance.