Capture Card or upgrade CPU

[lmeneses]

I didn't know where this post would be best placed so sorry about that, but I have two questions. My first question is, right now I have a 9600k, but I have decided I would like to delve into streaming more. However, the 9600k really sucks for streaming tho apparently (I thought it was decent, but it cannot run anything, unless I'm doing something wrong). So, I have been debating whether I should just upgrade to a ryzen cpu (which will require a new mobo as well) or to an 8700k and use my PC for both gaming and streaming, or if using a dell optilex 3020 I have laying around with a capture card is a better/cheaper option. If the second choice is the better option, does anyone have any decent budget capture cards I can get? Thanks in advance! 

[Jurrunio]

12 minutes ago, lmeneses said:

However, the 9600k really sucks for streaming tho apparently (I thought it was decent, but it cannot run anything, unless I'm doing something wrong)

Try give OBS high priority in Task Manager

[Daniel Z.]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

Try give OBS high priority in Task Manager

Even with that, 9600k isn’t great for streaming.

 

OP, what GPU do you have?

[Jurrunio]

20 minutes ago, Daniel Z. said:

Even with that, 9600k isn’t great for streaming.

it is a free solution, just to last a few months for 3rd gen Ryzen

[Daniel Z.]

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

it is a free solution, just to last a few months for 3rd gen Ryzen

Well if OP has a decent GPU, they’re quite good. Turning NVENC is very good, I would recommend it if OP has a 1660 or better.

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, Daniel Z. said:

Well if OP has a decent GPU, they’re quite good. Turning NVENC is very good, I would recommend it if OP has a 1660 or better.

if you can see his signature, there's an RX 580. AMD's alternative is AMF I think?

[Daniel Z.]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

if you can see his signature, there's an RX 580. AMD's alternative is AMF I think?

Oh, I’m on mobile. Well AMD encoders are decent but not nearly as good as NVENC or software h264. For best gaming performance, get a new RTX card, for better recording quality get an i7 9700k or i9 9900k.

[LogicalDrm]

What is the actual issue you have when streaming? Capture card would move encoding elsewhere, but if CPU power isn't issue to begin with, that really doesn't help. Besides that, you could setup encoding over network with OBS without having capture card. Imo only reason for getting capture card is if you have multiple other devices you want to capture. Like cameras, consoles etc.

[lmeneses]

4 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

What is the actual issue you have when streaming? Capture card would move encoding elsewhere, but if CPU power isn't issue to begin with, that really doesn't help. Besides that, you could setup encoding over network with OBS without having capture card. Imo only reason for getting capture card is if you have multiple other devices you want to capture. Like cameras, consoles etc.

The main issue is the stream is very choppy, like unwatchable. 

[lmeneses]

11 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Try give OBS high priority in Task Manager

I will try that! 

 

10 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

it is a free solution, just to last a few months for 3rd gen Ryzen

And I'm guessing you're recommending I upgrade? 

 

9 hours ago, Daniel Z. said:

Oh, I’m on mobile. Well AMD encoders are decent but not nearly as good as NVENC or software h264. For best gaming performance, get a new RTX card, for better recording quality get an i7 9700k or i9 9900k.

Yea, the main issue with the stream is the frames suck, not so much the performance or quality. Like there are frequent still images 

[Jurrunio]

11 minutes ago, lmeneses said:

And I'm guessing you're recommending I upgrade? 

For one machine, that is. You could totally get another mid range system for encoding, but that's extra space and no extra performance when you're not streaming

[LogicalDrm]

20 minutes ago, lmeneses said:

The main issue is the stream is very choppy, like unwatchable. 

Is CPU usage pinned to 100%? Are you dropping frames? What's your upload speed and bitrate you are using?

[Daniel Z.]

I had a similar problem when trying to use my i5 4460, my streaming became watchable when I used NVENC.

[KuJoe]

Can you post your OBS stream settings? You have a lot of options available and building a 2nd PC is the most expensive and might not provide the best quality depending on the specs of the 2nd PC. While x264 is the best quality, it's not always the best option for you. Having a laggy stream should be easily fixable, heck I was gaming and streaming on an Intel Celeron J4105 without any dropped frames (specs and OBS settings here) so you should be fine with that beast of a PC.

 

Your free options are to adjust your OBS settings and x264 preset, use AMD's VCE hardware encoding, or Intel's QuickSync (QSV) hardware encoding. To give you an idea of the quality, here's some screenshots I took of the same video at the same bitrate for various encoders: Link

 

If you are looking at an upgrade in the near future, I would suggest looking at upgrading to an NVIDIA videocard as it might be cheaper than buying a new CPU and motherboard and will offer you the best improvement. When I stream with a single PC, I always use the NVENC hardware encoder even though I have an 8-core Ryzen because the quality difference is barely noticeable for me and my viewers at the bitrate and preset I use and it does not impact my frame rates in games. When I do 2 PC streaming I can increase my x264 preset to Slow or Very Slow to get much better quality in my stream, but when using a single PC the best I can do is Fast without losing FPS in my games so there's no real benefit to use x264.

 

Now with all of that being said, there are other benefits to having a 2nd PC for streaming such as ease of management of your stream where you can control your stream, apps, and mod your stream chat without having to alt-tab. Another nice benefit is that if your gaming PC starts acting up or gets hit with a random Windows Update reboot or something else you don't have to end the stream and just need to wait for it to reboot (I usually put on music during those 1-2 minutes so I don't lose viewers).

 

[lmeneses]

3 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

Is CPU usage pinned to 100%? Are you dropping frames? What's your upload speed and bitrate you are using?

The video bitrate is 3500, and no, it fluctuates around 80%

[lmeneses]

2 hours ago, KuJoe said:

 

 

How do I get QSV? And the only option for AMD encoding is just AMD; there is no VCE option, unless it is the same thing. And I have been looking into getting a 2070 or 2060 

[LogicalDrm]

17 minutes ago, lmeneses said:

The video bitrate is 3500, and no, it fluctuates around 80%

Ok, I have hard time believing that my 6yo i7 is still beating your current gen i5. I mean using same bitrate and testing with Overwatch, I hardly get 20% usage. So, if this same issue is regardless of what you are doing, then I'm starting to agree that your encoding really is issue.

[lmeneses]

 

4 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Ok, I have hard time believing that my 6yo i7 is still beating your current gen i5. I mean using same bitrate and testing with Overwatch, I hardly get 20% usage. So, if this same issue is regardless of what you are doing, then I'm starting to agree that your encoding really is issue.

Yea, I don't understand. I have been searching for a solution for a while, but I can never figure it out. Like, it will only be somewhat decent if I lower the games res (Apex Legends) to 720p and set all the graphical settings to the lowest. What could I do to fix the encoding?

[KuJoe]

5 hours ago, lmeneses said:

How do I get QSV? And the only option for AMD encoding is just AMD; there is no VCE option, unless it is the same thing. And I have been looking into getting a 2070 or 2060 

When I Googled it I saw that the i5-9600k has QSV support, are you not seeing the option in OBS? AMD's hardware encoder is called VCE but OBS just calls it AMD so I should have used that name. As for the rest of your settings, are you only gaming at 720p? With you specs you should be running at 1080p (but scaling down to 720p makes sense at 3500 bit rate).

 

My advice is play around with the settings and record videos locally (with "Same as stream" selected) instead of streaming to get an idea of what kind of quality you can expect while streaming. Let us know if the frame drop improves with AMD's hardware encoding, if not then there's a bigger underlying issue.

 

I'm starting to think there's something wrong with your PC or I severely over estimated Intel's performance if you can only run Apex Legends at 720p low settings. Prior to my current gaming PC I was using an Ryzen 1600 and a stock RX 480 and the gaming experience wasn't much better when I upgraded to a Ryzen 1700 and a GTX 1080 so your 6-core Intel and overclocked RX 480 should be able to handle most AAA titles at 1080p still.

[lmeneses]

2 hours ago, KuJoe said:

When I Googled it I saw that the i5-9600k has QSV support, are you not seeing the option in OBS? AMD's hardware encoder is called VCE but OBS just calls it AMD so I should have used that name. As for the rest of your settings, are you only gaming at 720p? With you specs you should be running at 1080p (but scaling down to 720p makes sense at 3500 bit rate).

 

My advice is play around with the settings and record videos locally (with "Same as stream" selected) instead of streaming to get an idea of what kind of quality you can expect while streaming. Let us know if the frame drop improves with AMD's hardware encoding, if not then there's a bigger underlying issue.

 

I'm starting to think there's something wrong with your PC or I severely over estimated Intel's performance if you can only run Apex Legends at 720p low settings. Prior to my current gaming PC I was using an Ryzen 1600 and a stock RX 480 and the gaming experience wasn't much better when I upgraded to a Ryzen 1700 and a GTX 1080 so your 6-core Intel and overclocked RX 480 should be able to handle most AAA titles at 1080p still.

I only see AMD and x254 software in the OBS settings. I tried running 1080p downscaled to 720, but it does not work. I will fiddle more with the controls. Coding with AMD's hardware did boost performance slightly, but it still did not help enough. Thanks for the help tho!

[KuJoe]

9 hours ago, lmeneses said:

I only see AMD and x254 software in the OBS settings. I tried running 1080p downscaled to 720, but it does not work. I will fiddle more with the controls. Coding with AMD's hardware did boost performance slightly, but it still did not help enough. Thanks for the help tho!

Do you have archives (VODs) enabled on Twitch? If so can you PM me your Twitch channel so I can see the issues you're having in your recent streams?

[lmeneses]

1 hour ago, KuJoe said:

Do you have archives (VODs) enabled on Twitch? If so can you PM me your Twitch channel so I can see the issues you're having in your recent streams?

I do. 

 

[lmeneses]

On 5/30/2019 at 8:16 AM, KuJoe said:

 

Yo, don't know if you care anymore or not lmao, but I did a rollback on the GPUs drives through the windows display settings, and then reupdated it, and that fixed the issue. I also enabled QSV for streaming, and I feel like that improved performance too 

[KuJoe]

7 minutes ago, lmeneses said:

Yo, don't know if you care anymore or not lmao, but I did a rollback on the GPUs drives through the windows display settings, and then reupdated it, and that fixed the issue. I also enabled QSV for streaming, and I feel like that improved performance too 

Very awesome! I haven't had a chance to watch the videos you posted but thanks for the update. I never would have guessed it was a GPU driver issue so good thinking there! Also glad to see you got QSV working, it's not the best option but it's not bad either.