Gaming/Streaming

[Programkira]

I've heard mixed remarks about how the i7 6700k 7700k, i5 6700k, and the Ryzen7 as to which is better for streaming and gaming simultaneously. Kinda just looking for clarity on the effect of core#/speed vs threads on price/performance

[Droidbot]

if you're doing light streaming and gaming: 7700k

if you're doing heavy streaming and gaming: ryzen 7 1700

 

[Programkira]

Define light streaming vs heavy

[Droidbot]

Just now, Programkira said:

Define light streaming vs heavy

The amount you do - 

light is uncommon, and streaming will degrade your gaming experience noticeably

heavy is common, and streaming will not degrade your gaming experience that much but you don't get the best performance to begin with

[DrMikeNZ]

With Ryzen, the extra cores allows the encoding to take place on the CPU with minimal impact to game performance.

However, with mainstream Intel, games can struggle for resources when performing these tasks simultaneously on the CPU. Those Intel chips you have an integrated GPU which you can use for quicksync encoding. The visual quality will be slightly worse (not noticeable to most), but you will not have the performance hit. Alternatively, you could offload the encoding to GPU or separate dedicated system.

 

If you game most of the time, and stream infrequently, Intel would be better suited. If you are streaming a lot, then Ryzen could be the better choice.

[Hiebly]

If by gaming and streaming you mean encoding & broadcasting your own gameplay (rather than just watching) then I'd suggest Ryzen. Unless you're a hypercompetitive gamer looking for like 144+ FPS in every single game, Ryzen will probably do the job just fine. And of course for streaming the ball is entirely in its court.

 

If you're only streaming casually (i.e. you don't care about having high quality settings since it's not something you're doing all the time) or you meant just watching streams, then heck you could just get an i5 and be set.

[Hiebly]

24 minutes ago, DrMikeNZ said:

With Ryzen, the extra cores allows the encoding to take place on the CPU with minimal impact to game performance.

However, with mainstream Intel, games can struggle for resources when performing these tasks simultaneously on the CPU. Those Intel chips you have an integrated GPU which you can use for quicksync encoding. The visual quality will be slightly worse (not noticeable to most), but you will not have the performance hit. Alternatively, you could offload the encoding to GPU or separate dedicated system.

 

If you game most of the time, and stream infrequently, Intel would be better suited. If you are streaming a lot, then Ryzen could be the better choice.

I've tested extensively and the difference between CPU encoding and QuickSync or NVENC is night and day at streaming bitrates (below 3500). For YouTube videos where you can have like 15,000+ Kbps, then QuickSync and NVENC quality become really good.

Also worth noting is that QuickSync doesn't have as minimal of a performance impact as NVENC. I still lose a significant amount of frames when using QuickSync encoder with my i5-4690K... the performance gain over CPU encoding isn't enough to justify how terrible the image quality is compared to CPU encoding. You could make a case for NVENC for casual streaming since it's <2% performance loss.

[Programkira]

I will probably be streaming often, but I'll be streaming console games through a capture card in my pc build so having a super high quality stream isn't mandatory. Yeah I want it to look good, but I honestly don't really care about it not being absolute top notch. if the I5 wont quite be enough and the I7 7600 will, then Id rather just pick the cheaper option so I can get a better webcam.

[Daniel Z.]

59 minutes ago, DrMikeNZ said:

With Ryzen, the extra cores allows the encoding to take place on the CPU with minimal impact to game performance.

However, with mainstream Intel, games can struggle for resources when performing these tasks simultaneously on the CPU. Those Intel chips you have an integrated GPU which you can use for quicksync encoding. The visual quality will be slightly worse (not noticeable to most), but you will not have the performance hit. Alternatively, you could offload the encoding to GPU or separate dedicated system.

 

If you game most of the time, and stream infrequently, Intel would be better suited. If you are streaming a lot, then Ryzen could be the better choice.

Why can't I use quick sync?

[Daniel Z.]

Nvenc is nice, but doesn't look as good as CPU encoding. My CPU can't even record Minecraft and play at the same time lol. 

[RileyTheFox]

9 minutes ago, Daniel Z. said:

Why can't I use quick sync?

Enable CPU Multi Monitor in the BIOS.

[Daniel Z.]

Just now, EvilCat70 said:

Enable CPU Multi Monitor in the BIOS.

Ok

[Daniel Z.]

Just now, EvilCat70 said:

Enable CPU Multi Monitor in the BIOS.

Wait you almost have the same specs as me!

[Speaker1264]

Even when using NVENC or QuickSync streaming will still take some resources from the CPU, and depending on the game will affect your FPS and/or stream quality with dropped frames, causing freezing for people watching and what not.  I would personally go with the Ryzen 1700, and overclock it to 3.9/4.0 GHz if you can.  The difference in FPS really isn't that much, and if you play with ultra settings, or higher than 1080p, you will most likely be GPU bottlenecked anyway, even with a 1080ti, or at the very least the margins narrow a bit.

[RileyTheFox]

2 minutes ago, Daniel Z. said:

Wait you almost have the same specs as me!

Yep  

[Daniel Z.]

3 minutes ago, Speaker1264 said:

Even when using NVENC or QuickSync streaming will still take some resources from the CPU, and depending on the game will affect your FPS and/or stream quality with dropped frames, causing freezing for people watching and what not.  I would personally go with the Ryzen 1700, and overclock it to 3.9/4.0 GHz if you can.  The difference in FPS really isn't that much, and if you play with ultra settings, or higher than 1080p, you will most likely be GPU bottlenecked anyway, even with a 1080ti, or at the very least the margins narrow a bit.

Not really, my added CPU usage when recording with nvenc is around 3 percent

[Speaker1264]

33 minutes ago, Daniel Z. said:

Not really, my added CPU usage when recording with nvenc is around 3 percent

Yeah, it may not be much. I've seen it go higher personally.  And it might be unlikely, but if your CPU hits 100% load then you will see dropped frames, even if OBS is only using 3%.  Whether it's from a CPU intensive game, how many or what other programs you have running in the background, or a badly timed automatic windows update, you can drop frames.  And you are much less likely to drop frames on an 8 core CPU vs a 4 core CPU.  Having those extra cores isn't all that bad.

 

Plus when using a GPU encoder you then need to waste GPU resources as opposed to CPU resources, so it's still a tradeoff.  And all the other encoders look much worse than x264 cpu encoding at the streaming upload speed of 3500 kbit/s.  Also, some people don't know, but there are different levels of compression for x264.  Having those extra cores will allow you to use the more cpu intensive x264 compressors, resulting in better video quality.