In my server I currently have an Intel i7 9th gen CPU with integrated Intel video.
I don’t use or need A.I. or LLM stuff, but we use jellyfin extensively in the family.
So far jellyfin worked always perfectly fine, but I could add (for free) an NVIDIA 2060 or a 1060. Would it be worth it?
And as power consumption, will the increase be noticeable? Should I do it or pass?
QuickSync is usually plenty to transcode. You will get more performance with a dedicated GPU, but the power consumption will increase massively.
Nvidia also has a limit how many streams can be transcoded at the same time. There are driver hacks to circumvent that.