Why does Nvidia still have better hardware video encoding than AMD?

The short version is that Nvidia invested heavily in dedicated encoding hardware and the software around it, then kept improving it over several generations. AMD has capable hardware too, but its encoder quality, compatibility, and application support have generally lagged behind. It’s less that AMD can’t do it and more that Nvidia has spent much more time making the whole ecosystem work reliably.

For a media server, Intel Quick Sync is often the best practical choice. Modern Intel CPUs can handle several simultaneous transcodes with excellent performance per watt, especially if you only need a handful of streams. A Ryzen CPU may be faster for general CPU tasks, but that doesn’t automatically make it the better media-server platform because video transcoding depends heavily on the dedicated encoder.

There are also business and software reasons. Nvidia has invested in video tools, drivers, application support, and proprietary features for a long time, while AMD has focused more of its resources elsewhere. Intel is also worth considering, since Quick Sync and newer Intel graphics can be very efficient for Plex or Jellyfin. The best choice depends on how many simultaneous streams you need, whether they require transcoding, and whether you care about Linux driver openness.