Advice please "shadow streaming" Vs building a setup

0Steve.Walker0 · 5 Jun 2019 at 20:19

Just for discussion or advice please be nice
I'm currently using an old pc to run shadow game streaming I have no issues with the service and I understand the draw backs

don't want a lecture about how good or bad it is that's for another post

I'm considering building a new pc for a project I'm well out of practice
my thoughts are is it possible to equal or beat the performance of the shadow with a mid range system and realistically what is price point

I'm simply a casual gamer and I do not play comparative PvP mainly because I'm crap at it

The shadow system boasts some pretty high specs so i don't want to build a pc that is ultimately worse than what I have now
Nor do I have 8000 quid to spend on a bit of fun
Just looking for ideas thanks in advance

EsaT · 7 Jun 2019 at 10:58

Welcome aboard.

For as long as laws of the physics continue to exist, cloud/streaming gaming replacing local gaming/hardware continues to be illegal substance smoke cloud of marketroids.
(and those looking to take away player's control to hardware and games)

Unless you've got optical fibre connection to internet backbone and servers are actually located near network latency craps gaming experience very easily.
And especially wireless unstablebands can have high and wildly varying latencies if there are more users.
Because of that any high refresh rate (like that 144Hz) hyping is pretty total PR BS.
Wouldn't take much for controller input to appear 10 frames late on screen.

Besides needed image compression also easily compromising image quality.
Both higher resolutions and higher frame rates vastly increase bandwidth need.
And being able to use only single pass encoding worsens need for (likely not available) bandwidth per image quality.

Resident Evil 2 was playable in 4K with medium graphics on my LG OLED TV. Unfortunately, the streaming was choppy, there was a noticeable delay when moving my character and the game simply didn't look as sharp as it does on my PC with the same settings. There were ugly jagged lines along the edges of objects (even with a high level of anti-aliasing set up in-game), and panning the screen was jerky and headache-inducing. The erratic performance made it tough to tell if a bullet was actually going to reach a zombie (not ideal when ammo is so scarce) or if my head was about to be chewed off.

Bumping down the resolution to 1,440p made the game run beyond 60 fps, but the buttery smoothness of that frame rate was nowhere to be found. I'm not sure if it was lag from Shadow or my home network, but there was a noticeable difference compared to my gaming rig...

Hitman 2 and The Witcher 3 didn't fare much better. Even though they were technically running faster than they would on an Xbox One X or PlayStation 4 Pro, playing them from a far-off server simply felt worse than using those consoles.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/27/blade-shadow-ghost-game-streaming/

Local gaming/hardware simply always gives more consistent and smoother experience.
Games most suitable for streaming aren't really demanding on expensive hardware to buy either.

And unless liking only handfull of games that quarter TB storage space is miserably small.

By choosing PC parts well, for performance per money and upgrading it can give overall good performance for very reasonable per month cost over the years.
Case is easily 10+ year usable part.
Good PSU is also 10 year usage life part.
Storage devices can be also usable long time.
Well chosen CPU can be good for five years along with motherboard and RAM.
Graphics card is the fastest obsolete becoming part usually needing replacing like every three years.
But by staying in performance per money choises that would also make reasonable cost over time.

0Steve.Walker0 · 7 Jun 2019 at 12:41

Thanks for the reply
I understand the drawbacks of the shadow system but I think it has its uses
I signed up for it 9 months ago I'm not trying to replace my home computer I just found it intriguing and as my pc was outdated it worked out for me and was enough for me to want to return to pc gaming

I have not built a pc for a few years I've just messed around with my old ones and used consoles for gaming
looking to get back up to speed
I simply wondered what sort of system would be considered able to match the performance

I totally agree with your point about lastability
That's why I asked on here for advice around price point and what I guess would be considered a good investment to replace the shadow
Bearing in mind I have to build from scratch not upgrade

EsaT · 7 Jun 2019 at 14:58

Only thing which has changed in assembling PC in the last five years is the amount of cosmetic garbage and RGB crud.
At this rate we'll soon have even screws with LEDs on them...
And people paying insane prices from those.

I mean there are now lots of £25-30 RGB fans with craptacular 2 year warranties.
While you can get good non-RGB fan with 10 year warranty for £6.
That's the kind of savings good no nonsense part choises can bring.

Similarly in storage standard SATA signaled SSD, with mostly insignificant game loading time performance difference to marketing hyped NVMe SSD, can give nearly doubled capacity per price.
With 500GB level SSD costing about £50.

CPU used by Blaze is half dozen years old Haswell architecture based, so exceeding its performance is easy.
In last year and half also numerous security patches to Intel's Swiss cheese secure CPUs have kept nibbling performance.
So who knows what's their actual performance anymore.
Server usage scenarios have been hit the hardest.
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/291649-intel-performance-amd-spectre-meltdown-mds-patches

Anyway would be best to wait month for release of Zen2 Ryzens and their effect of CPU markets before building PC.

But excluding peripherals like keyboard+mouse+monitor about £1000 could give pretty good PC.

10 year warranty PSU enough for pretty high power consumption graphics cards is £95:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seas...plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-05q-ss.html
What I would consider as minimum quality level PSU for such budget gaming PC would shave £20, at the expense of having fixed cables and half the warranty length.

Decent case could be had for about £50, but well chosen case is long time investment.
In case of case needing extra fan or two Arctic P12/P14 are £6 for superior bang per buck.
Normal good CPU cooler for low noise is £30 level, near top level £43.