Decisions, decisions...

[An0maly_76]

Budget (including currency): 350-500 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Movie Ripping / Recording (personal archive), Music recording / production, BeamNG.drive, American Truck Simulator, possibly other games.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Current configuration: 500W 80 Gold PSU, MSI B450M Bazooka Gaming mobo, AMD R7-1700, WD Blue 1TB M.2, 2TB HDD (Machine reports WD10EZEX-08WN4AO with 2TB capacity?) 2tbmake/model unknown), 32GB Crucial Ballistix RAM, Asus TUF Gaming GTX1650S 4GB OC. Have R9 5900X as yet uninstalled.

 

I am at a crossroads and trying to decide the best plan of action. Before I go further, I should state that this is an entry-level CyberPowerPC build with some mid-level upgrades. That being said, I feel this machine has crested with budget upgrades and curious as to opinions on upgrade / replacement / running mate. As stated, I record my DVDs to hard drive for my own personal use, and would like to dabble in gameplay recording also. I say running mate because I have considered the possibility of a second machine to record through NDI with OBS. Side note, I also am experiencing issues with my monitor, a 43", and looking to upgrade to a 55", which I've priced at around $500 (maybe slightly less) without smart TV features.

After upgrading with an M.2 SSD, 4x the RAM and the best GPU I could get without upgrading PSU, this little 1700 actually is pretty quick, though I do have occasional glitches with test recording. I likely have Asperger's, so details can get skewed in my mind. But if memory serves, while the 5900X is 46% faster than my 1700, the GTX1080ti is 216% faster than my GTX1650S. And after reading some posts indicating that the 5900 is overkill for gaming, I am thinking this is the GPU, not the CPU. Unfortunately, the 500W PSU must be upgraded to facilitate a better GPU. MSI also tells me that my 2018 B450M may not be able to handle the BIOS update necessary for the 5900X, so though I've found basic motherboards supporting the 5900X for $200-$500, I'm not sure it's worth upgrading this machine further, as it seems the GPU is the bigger bottleneck at this point. I'm not about to spend $600-$1500 just for a new GPU either. So my other thought is to get a cheap workstation with enough muscle and storage for temporary recording to split the workload.

 

Maybe I could build an upgraded tandem machine on the cheap, possibly using the 5900X, with one to record through NDI, the other to game?

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

I don't understand waht you mean pls clarify? Are you meaning that you are upgrading and also please list the hardware in a list

[An0maly_76]

Needing to change up. Not sure whether upgrading, replacing with better or running tandem machines is better at this point.

 

MSI B450M Bazooka mobo, AMD R7 1700, 32GB RAM, 1TB M.2 SSD, GTX1650S, 500W PSU.

Primary use: Gaming, movies, music recording. Have considered running tandem machine for recording through OBS NDI extension.
Issues:Slight glitches in recording attempts and current storage has nearly topped out.

Have AMD R9 5900X new in box, but mobo mfr indicates BIOS update may damage existing mobo, and internet threads and benchmarks indicate GPU may be more to blame than CPU. In short, system is plenty fast enough, but GPU seems to be slowing CPU slightly, a GPU upgrade requires a PSU upgrade, and CPU upgrade requires mobo upgrade anyway. So upgrading it further hardly seems cost-effective. Feasible additional storage starts around $150-$200, as do suitable mobo for 5900X.

 

I have found a couple local machines with GPUs ranging from GTX1080ti to GTX3090 in the $1000-$2000 range with i7 and i9 processors, considering buying these for the GPU / PSU upgrades, and swapping 5900X into them, using the existing 1700 rig as a recording machine, but this may still require a suitable motherboard and be out of my budget. I ultimately want to have 4-8 TB storage for movies, and possibly be able to record gameplay for YouTube or something.

[GhostRoadieBL]

10 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

a GPU upgrade requires a PSU upgrade

you can run upto around a 2070 or 3060ti on a 500W psu no problem.

it is possibly the 1700 but more likely a settings issue, the GPU you have should be able to support encoding multiple 4k streams let alone a DVD resolution stream. Even the CPU is more than enough for encoding videos to a harddrive. What software are you using for recording and does it have hardware acceleration enabled?

[An0maly_76]

Using OBS (not with NDI yet). Gameplay videos look okay but occasionally have a touch of video lag on gameplay, and movie recordings glitch as though the DVD were scratched or something, even though the DVD itself plays fine. Recording to my original HDD (now auxiliary storage), if that makes a difference. I wonder if that HDD uses SMR and that is causing it? I should probably mention that my 1650S is a TUF Gaming 4GB OC, and unless it was factory overclocked or determines on its own whether it is necessary, it is NOT overclocked. I've been told it is not overclocked from the factory, but not sure how good that info is.

 

I've not seen settings in OBS for hardware acceleration. If you think that would help, could you let me know how to find them? I've been given the strong impression that anything beyond a GTX1650 requires at least a 600W-750W power supply. Is that incorrect, then? I also don't want to blow $1000-$1500 just on a GPU, either, especially if I'll have to get another mobo to use the 5900X.

 

Truth be told, I'm reasonably happy with the system performance, but I feel like the loftier of my goals may be a bit beyond its current abilities, which is why I was considering using OBS NDI extension to run a tandem machine for recording, splitting the workload.

 

I have a line on a suitable 6TB drive for storage expansion for $140, but wasn't sure if it was worth throwing more money into this machine. But if you say the GPU and CPU are reasonably well-matched and that this is a settings issue, by all means, let's see what we can fine-tune on this beast.

 

I can see about attaching or linking a video clip to show my current output if that would help.

Edited February 8, 2022 by An0maly_76
More info added.

[An0maly_76]

I uploaded a video to Google Drive. As of 2:23 am it was still processing and may not load just yet. The game plays smoother than the video shows, but I'm not sure why. Not sure whether Google Drive waters down the quality, but the OBS original recording resolution was 1360x768, 60 fps at 24,630-24,800 kbps. Also, the steering is a tad jerky, I am playing with a keyboard, as living quarters make using my steering wheel / pedal setup a bit cumbersome at the moment.

 

It's a bit long (42 minutes total), but I wanted to make sure it had enough footage for random glitches to show. Has some clips of messing around in BeamNG.drive (which has some nice detail of reflection in the paint), a clip from a movie with two or three of the annoying glitches that look like skips, and then messing around in American Truck Simulator. These have some different views showing metallic paint transition simulation, a bit of a ride with different views and such, messing around at a truck stop repair shop, then a bit more of a ride with a couple songs in the background, as I wondered if music in the background could be part of it. There IS an editing glitch around 34:54 after leaving the truck stop coming down the ramp to the interstate. I tried to remove popping into the music player and missed some of the delay. Everything else is as it was recorded.

 

To me, the quality and bitrate seems a bit watered down, considering I used the 'lossless' export option in my editing software (NCH VideoPad). After watching the video a few times, I'm tempted to speed up the footage without changing audio pitch and see if it looks / plays closer to reality. It definitely seems to need a resolution boost though.

Edited February 8, 2022 by An0maly_76
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[An0maly_76]

UPDATE: Burned a lot of midnight oil tweaking OBS. Got it just about perfect, but some of the colors appear milky, washed-out. I'm sure this is a color correction issue. My editing software has a color adjustment effect, as well as a color curve effect. Not sure what color curve actually is. The color adjustment consists of contrast, brightness and gamma. Getting pretty close, I think, but wanted some input from others as to whether they had this situation, and what had worked for them. Here are some screenshots. Left is a live capture from ATS, right is a live capture from OBS Video.

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised

[Jonathan Lee]

15 hours ago, An0maly_76 said:

And after reading some posts indicating that the 5900 is overkill for gaming

Depends on how you use your computer. If you tend to run a bunch of programs in the background while gaming and have multiple monitors, I don't think it's overkill. If you have 1 monitor and close all programs when you game, then yea it's pretty overkill.

 

15 hours ago, An0maly_76 said:

MSI B450M Bazooka mobo

You might be able to update the bios and just plug in the 5900X into this motherboard, but I hear it's pretty hit and miss with those beta BIOS. Might be easier to make a new build and just keep your current ram and GPU.

[An0maly_76]

6 hours ago, Jonathan Lee said:

Depends on how you use your computer. If you tend to run a bunch of programs in the background while gaming and have multiple monitors, I don't think it's overkill. If you have 1 monitor and close all programs when you game, then yea it's pretty overkill.

 

You might be able to update the bios and just plug in the 5900X into this motherboard, but I hear it's pretty hit and miss with those beta BIOS. Might be easier to make a new build and just keep your current ram and GPU.

I get that running other programs in the background is a factor. As to the motherboard, what MSI is telling me is that because my particular B450M was built a good couple years before the 5900X was released, it may not have circuitry or other revisions necessary to work with the chip properly. And that I can see. If a 5900X requires a revision to the data bus that not present on the 2017 / 2018 version of the board I have, that could very well cause problems. The reason I don't want to tempt the fates on that, is that I have to update the BIOS with the 1700 in place, and MSI told me that the BIOS update alone could fry the board, which effectively means it may fry the 1700 with it.

 

Even if I get a newer motherboard that is guaranteed to support the 5900X, I've been told that it will likely need a BIOS update out of the box, which means I have to take the 1700 off of my original board, use it to update the BIOS on the newer board, THEN install the 5900X. BIG, BIG, PITA.

 

Maybe my thought process is flawed here, but with the 5900X only effectively 46% faster than the 1700, and a GTX1080ti 127% faster than a GTX1650 Super (I figure my 4GB OC edition makes for perhaps a 10-15% reduction in that margin), it would certainly appear that the GPU would contribute more to a bottleneck than the CPU in this case. Or is there something I'm missing or not accounting for here?

 

I just thought of something as well in regard to the color vibrancy difference in my live screenshots versus what OBS is rendering. It may well be the media player I'm using (Media Player Classic Home Cinema) has color output settings that need tweaking. I'm aware that there is a range output, but that does nothing here. Is there some other setting in MPC-HC that adjusts saturation, hue, etc.? Because other than the difference in how the color pops, I believe I have my recording issues just about nailed. Just a matter of finding the right sampling rate.

 

I'm kind of with Jonathan about doing a new build with the 5900X since I already have it, and run a tandem setup for OBS recording using NDI. The cost-prohibitive factor, of course, is a GPU, as GPUs seem to have gone through the roof. I don't think I need a 3000-series, but it seems the lower-to-mid-tier setups aren't that much more cost-effective these days. Though here is an interesting bit... a $109.69 "mystery box" on Amazon. Quoted from the ad:

"Contains all series of NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards, including RTX3090, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6900 XT, RX 6800, RX 6700 XT, RX 6600 XT. (The graphics cards include second-hand and new, GeForce 30 series And RX 6000 are brand new.) "

 

Kinda sounds like "pay us $109.69 for us to just ship a random GPU to you", or worse, maybe it's just the box, nothing inside.

 

Truthfully, I wouldn't have an issue with running another 1650S 4GB OC in the new build, it's plenty capable. I've watched a few gameplay videos comparing output of various cards, and so far it seems with anything beyond my current GTX1650S, all you're paying for is a little more speed for higher frame rate, which is a consideration, of course. But it sounds to me like I can pay double the collective parts prices for one-stop shopping, or run tandem machines with mid-tier parts that are easier to find for perhaps less money overall. I like the tandem setup idea, as it allows the gaming rig to run at its full potential. However, there is the consideration of having two 500W power supplies running versus one 700W-800W, as that's a recurring long-term expense. So perhaps a new build is a better idea.

 

I was hoping to keep a budget of around $500 beyond replacing my monitor, which as I stated earlier is experiencing issues. But I'm wondering now if the 5900X, GTX1080ti, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD would do the job cost-effectively without running tandem machines. Thoughts?

Edited February 9, 2022 by An0maly_76
More info, link added

[An0maly_76]

Well, well, well... What have we HERE?

For anyone else struggling with this, it seems that color management is turned off by default in Media Player Classic Home Cinema. I got here by right-clicking the player screen, then selecting the drop-down menus from there. Seems to have solved the color correction issue, so apparently this was not an OBS problem, it was a media player problem. That being said, it's still a bit laggy on playback, so perhaps that is a sampling rate issue?

 

UPDATE: The only way I've been able to record somewhat properly is to set OBS canvas and output resolutions to 1280x720. Any higher than this, even when they are matched, I have a good quality video in the upper left corner -- how much of the screen depends on the resolution...

 

 

 

Here is what I get above that, even when matched:

 

 

[An0maly_76]

So after some more playing with settings, pulling my hair out after it didn't change anything, playing with settings some more, rinse, lather, repeat, I have found a rather interesting phenomena. Apparently if my Windows desktop resolution is set higher than what is supported by OBS, or what it is recording, even if the recording is done in fullscreen mode, whatever is being recorded will display within THOSE dimensions. Which makes the video a tiny fraction of a larger recording. *smh* It makes sense, but it's still stupid.

I had to choke back my desktop resolution to straighten it out, which is, to say the least, annoying. As Charlie Brown would say, "AUUUUUUUUUGH!" I only had time to do a short video to test my theory, will post something to show the results tomorrow. Maybe as others have said, I don't need to upgrade at all, just more storage. I wonder even now if I simply needed to crank up the resolution on the game I was trying to record, rather than choke back my desktop resolution.

[An0maly_76]

Tweaked some more settings and FINALLY got my first decent high-res video! Recorded at 4K, exporting at 2k after editing as I write this. I've noticed that road speed in ATS doesn't really seem realistic on my system, so I sped it up 20% in the editor to make the speed more realistic. Thanks to the members who made me realize my setup wasn't as slow as some might make it out to be and encouraging me to work on the settings. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, though it seems to have a bit of lag at times, perhaps some folks here might have some tips on what I can do to cure that. In a nutshell, it seems these issues were most of my problem with getting decent video:

 

1) OBS originally didn't seem to want to record at over 720p, even for a game running at 2K with a desktop set to 4K. What made it willing to do more all of a sudden, I have no clue. I went through the settings wizard after changing the desktop resolution, maybe that did the trick?

 

2) Still not sure why, but Windows desktop resolution was causing the 720p video I WAS getting into one corner of a large screen.

 

3) This one is for those video newbies such as myself who may think their encoding is having color matching issues. Be sure the media player you use for playback has color management set up appropriately. Mine (MPC-HC) had the color management completely turned off by default for some odd reason, and figuring out why my rendered video seemed washed-out and dim was driving me nuts until I found it.

 

So, here is a screenshot of the Windows Task Manager CPU / GPU / RAM usage, with American Truck Simulator paused in the background, with OBS still running (but not recording), and my video editor (NCH VideoPad) exporting an edited version of my latest test video in the background.

This post will have a link to the video as soon as I upload it, if anyone has any ideas about sorting out the minor kinks I noticed on playback. Mostly a slight lag in audio, video or both when changing views. Otherwise, it came out pretty good considering. Given the usage numbers in the screenshot, I'm thinking there's one or more settings I have yet to dial in, maybe something I don't know about yet?  Open to suggestions, and thanks again to those who have given me a steer in the right direction.

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by An0maly_76

[An0maly_76]

UPDATE: I figured out how to turn on the in-game overlay, and some VERY interesting findings. My frame rate wasn't so great at 4k even with moderate detail, so I took ATS down to 720p with highest detail. The game looked amazing when it could maintain 60 fps. However, it started hiccuping at 1280p, 1440p was worse, and highest detail with 4K actually froze the game. I actually saw it go from 60 to 28 to 0 in 30-45 seconds at high detail in 1280p.

 

Also, GPU temp hovered around 72 C (161.6 F) running OBS in the background. Within limits for rendering, which means the frame rate falling off is not due to overheating. Also, during all this, the CPU usage never topped 25-35%, if that.

 

So researching further for several hours, all indicators are that the 1700 Ryzen I have is literally LAUGHING at the games I play, and my rig really needs more GPU power to round out performance, not more CPU as I thought. Several sites, such as one I discovered called PC Builds, have several performance-matching calculators designed to avoid problems like this. Their bottleneck calculator indicated as much as a 10% bottleneck between the CPU and GPU:

 

Their "Can You Run It" calculator pretty much says the same thing (Euro Truck Simulator 2 is more or less the same platform and engine as ATS). Even accounting for some inaccuracy, I'd say this game needs at least twice the FPS this card can deliver even without recording...

 

 

Well, I think I know now why my FPS isn't consistent. This shows that while the Asus TUF Gaming 1650S-4GB-OC I have is NOT a bad GPU for the money (I got mine on sale for $160), it simply isn't well-matched for the eight-core 1700. I've perused several sites designed to analyze the compatibility and performance trade-offs of PC build components, every single one recommending the RTX series, 2080 and up for this processor, only recommending the 1650 Super for 4-core processors such as the Ryzen 1500:

 

I don't necessarily want to spend $1000-$1500 on a GPU, but the proof is in the pudding. I think over time the heat of overworking the card I have could hurt other parts of my rig, even with 3 100mm fans and moderate ventilation.

Edited February 12, 2022 by An0maly_76
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