So I'm a budget gamer... and I need some help.

[Sesho]

Hello, LTT user reading this post. I am looking to start record Minecraft and other things with an Elgato Camlink. But I don't know if my specs are decent enough... I'm only using the Ryzen 3 2200g and I don't know if I should upgrade or not. I also want to do some light video editing. Is this a good idea, or should I upgrade? (I recently built my first pc at 14 y/o so I still need some help with stuff here and there.)

[Ashiella]

The R3 2200G would be okay with recording stuff at like 1080p60 ultrafast or AMD VCE (If it has it, I forgot) adding stuff to the scene really isnt much more taxing. You'll probably be able to record light games like Minecraft, but get to any big titles and you'll likely struggle. As for video editing, you'll probably be okay, but it certainly wont be speedy. I would upgrade, but I'm a power user with a 3900x and both a gtx 1080 hybrid and gtx 980 solely for compute.

[Fasauceome]

If you add a cheap current gen graphics card you can use hardware encoding, an RX 570 can pull it off.

[vanished]

1 hour ago, Fasauceome said:

If you add a cheap current gen graphics card you can use hardware encoding, an RX 570 can pull it off.

does the iGPU not offer that?  I know Intel's can, I just assumed AMD was the same.

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

does the iGPU not offer that?  I know Intel's can, I just assumed AMD was the same.

I was mistaken, the Vega iGPU does actually have a hardware encoder. It would be worth a shot.

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1 minute ago, Fasauceome said:

I was mistaken, the Vega iGPU does actually have a hardware encoder. It would be worth a shot.

That would be my idea too, just OBS with the hardware encoder in the iGPU, no need for an elgato anything.

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

That would be my idea too, just OBS with the hardware encoder in the iGPU, no need for an elgato anything.

The elgato camlink mentioned is to make an external camera a webcam apparently

[vanished]

5 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

The elgato camlink mentioned is to make an external camera a webcam apparently

Interesting, not sure how OBS would handle that, but I know plenty of people mix the webcam signal into the corner so hopefully not too much extra load.

 

As for if the 2200G is enough for all of this, it depends.  I've had good luck with recording some games with no impact, but others, even if they continue to play well, have massive issues with the recording.  You'll just have to try it and see, it's free after all.  If you do need to upgrade we can talk about that but if this works then no need to jump to that yet.  If you do upgrade though, you'll probably be able to get better framerates by alleviating any CPU bottleneck, not to mention you will have a much nicer time in the editing and rendering process.  Not to say the 2200G can't do it but there's definitely stronger options.  What GPU do you currently have?