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Which to upgrade for better OBS Streaming?

Hey crew.

 

I'm looking at doing some streaming on Twitch. However, my rig is having trouble keeping up even at 1080p recording when gaming. It records the desktop just great (which I use for business).

 

I built the machine a couple of years ago. When I built it, I used a very medium i5-6400 CPU and a GTX960. 

 

CPU: Intel i5-6400

GPU: GTX 960, 4GB

RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4, 2666

MOBO: ASUS Sabertooth Z170S

SSD: 256GB Toshiba (OS, Software)

HDD: 1TB Western Digital (Storage)

 

It plays games at 1080 very well on high to max settings depending on the title.

 

But it struggles to encode during gameplay.

 

I'm sure there's a bottleneck somewhere. I'm thinking the CPU. What do you guys think?

 

Would it be worth upgrading to an i7+?

 

I'm using OBS to record if it helps.

 

Thanks in advance.

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What sort of upload-bandwidth do you have? You could switch OBS to encode using NVENC instead of x264, which would do the encoding on the GPU itself and thus help a lot, but you should then maybe up your bitrate somewhat.

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Yes I would 100% recommend upgrading to a 6700k or 7700k so you can keep motherboard or you can lower the quality of encoding I know obs has tones of options on how fast it will encode the frames you can go slower for it to be lower quality but less cpu intensive. 

System Specs

CPU: I7-5820k   MOBO:Asus X99 strix   RAM: 32gb corsair Dominator Platinum 2666mhz   GPU: Gigabyte G1 Gaming 980TI  PSU: Corsair RM1000i 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/mg7k2R

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buy a used i7 6700K or the i7 7700K

 

because streaming does indeed use a lot more of the CPU than the GPU

 

the GPU could also do an upgrade to the GTX 1070

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The cheapest wat to target the problem would be upgrading to an i7 6700k, overclock it and selling your old cpu. If you really wanted, you could sell your cpu + motherboard and get a Ryzen system (if you were serious about streaming and if you wanted  to use cpu encoding, which is superior in quality when compared to nvenc or Intel quicksync),  but the most cost-effective way is to buy a first gen skylake overclockable i7 (not the i7 7700k, it's to expensive and you won't get your money worth) 

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Before you spend a single dollar on new equipment, I recommend you try using NVENC. It's the dedicated video encoding engine that's inside our GTX 980.

It should be in the encoder setting page. Just switch it from x264 to NVENC.

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I'd just use the hardware encoding from the recording chip on the 960... Not as good as good CPU encoding, but really good for performance, or else just get a better CPU yes.

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14 hours ago, WereCatf said:

What sort of upload-bandwidth do you have? You could switch OBS to encode using NVENC instead of x264, which would do the encoding on the GPU itself and thus help a lot, but you should then maybe up your bitrate somewhat.

I have Comcast - so 10-15 Mbps sustained. Not fantastic but not horrible. Down, I get 70-80+ Mbps.

 

It sounds like I should try NVENC on the GTX. Then if that doesn't help as much as I'd like I'll look for a CPU upgrade.

 

Though, since it's been a few years I may try a Ryzen build for fun.  :)

 

THANK YOU, everyone!

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