Steam streaming with APU

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 11:41

I'm not sure where to put this, graphics is probably best.

I was just playing around with a simple APU system (6800K) in a cheap HTPC case, I'd installed Ubuntu Linux on it in order to use Netflix and XBMC.

AMD's Linux graphics drivers have never had a good reputation, but I thought I'd give Steam a try to see how things are now. Sure enough games like Left for Dead 2 run absolutely fine, and of course all the indie titles that don't need much GPU grunt.

What surprised me though is that without any configuration at all, simply launching Steam, it connected to my main PC running Windows 8 and presented a full list of my games, all ready to be streamed. I was thinking it'd be a bit crappy and not work properly, but it worked brilliantly. Barely any artifacts, a very stable 60fps vsync on the TV with games maxed out.

calliusmaximus · 13 Oct 2014 at 11:55

Its pretty amazing stuff, also you can alt-tab out and then run a non steam game and it still streams im told.
Ive just got some new controllers so i can use my htpc on my projector, i did have some trouble tweaking it to use my quick sync to compress the images but building a new machine then ill play some more.

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 12:24

I've had issues with alt-tab and stuff, but it's a problem with the AMD drivers as it doesn't happen with nvidia.

Speaking of which, Matt, tell your AMD friends to get an Ubuntu repository for the proprietary drivers, like lots of other companies do. It'll give loads of brownie points from the Linux community, and it'll be something nvidia doesn't offer

CEUOTC · 13 Oct 2014 at 13:20

teppic said:
I'm not sure where to put this, graphics is probably best.

I was just playing around with a simple APU system (6800K) in a cheap HTPC case, I'd installed Ubuntu Linux on it in order to use Netflix and XBMC.

AMD's Linux graphics drivers have never had a good reputation, but I thought I'd give Steam a try to see how things are now. Sure enough games like Left for Dead 2 run absolutely fine, and of course all the indie titles that don't need much GPU grunt.

What surprised me though is that without any configuration at all, simply launching Steam, it connected to my main PC running Windows 8 and presented a full list of my games, all ready to be streamed. I was thinking it'd be a bit crappy and not work properly, but it worked brilliantly. Barely any artifacts, a very stable 60fps vsync on the TV with games maxed out.

Sounds like it is working well, Kernel 3.17 has been released reciently and brings a few more bits to the table.

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 13:28

CEUOTC said:
Sounds like it is working well, Kernel 3.17 has been released reciently and brings a few more bits to the table.

I'm using the 14.9 drivers rather than the OSS ones, though I've heard there are lots of improvements with those in recent kernels. I guess for streaming as long as the OSS ones support hardware decoding properly, it'd be fine.

shankly1985 · 13 Oct 2014 at 13:45

teppic said:
I'm not sure where to put this, graphics is probably best.

I was just playing around with a simple APU system (6800K) in a cheap HTPC case, I'd installed Ubuntu Linux on it in order to use Netflix and XBMC.

AMD's Linux graphics drivers have never had a good reputation, but I thought I'd give Steam a try to see how things are now. Sure enough games like Left for Dead 2 run absolutely fine, and of course all the indie titles that don't need much GPU grunt.

What surprised me though is that without any configuration at all, simply launching Steam, it connected to my main PC running Windows 8 and presented a full list of my games, all ready to be streamed. I was thinking it'd be a bit crappy and not work properly, but it worked brilliantly. Barely any artifacts, a very stable 60fps vsync on the TV with games maxed out.

You doing all this over Wifi?? or these all connected wired? Something I been thinking doing for down stair.

LtMatt · 13 Oct 2014 at 13:48

teppic said:
I'm not sure where to put this, graphics is probably best.

I was just playing around with a simple APU system (6800K) in a cheap HTPC case, I'd installed Ubuntu Linux on it in order to use Netflix and XBMC.

AMD's Linux graphics drivers have never had a good reputation, but I thought I'd give Steam a try to see how things are now. Sure enough games like Left for Dead 2 run absolutely fine, and of course all the indie titles that don't need much GPU grunt.

What surprised me though is that without any configuration at all, simply launching Steam, it connected to my main PC running Windows 8 and presented a full list of my games, all ready to be streamed. I was thinking it'd be a bit crappy and not work properly, but it worked brilliantly. Barely any artifacts, a very stable 60fps vsync on the TV with games maxed out.

teppic said:
I've had issues with alt-tab and stuff, but it's a problem with the AMD drivers as it doesn't happen with nvidia.

Speaking of which, Matt, tell your AMD friends to get an Ubuntu repository for the proprietary drivers, like lots of other companies do. It'll give loads of brownie points from the Linux community, and it'll be something nvidia doesn't offer

Thanks for the feedback Tepic, i will pass it on.

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 13:54

shankly1985 said:
You doing all this over Wifi?? or these all connected wired? Something I been thinking doing for down stair.

I'm using those power line things. I've got the AMD box in the living room and the main PC in my bedroom. I get about 10Mb/sec sustained, more than enough for streaming games and video.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 13 Oct 2014 at 13:56

Mate was using the Steaming fine on his A10-5750M based laptop.

shankly1985 · 13 Oct 2014 at 13:56

teppic said:
I'm using those power line things. I've got the AMD box in the living room and the PC in my bedroom. I get about 10Mb/sec sustained, more than enough for streaming games and video.

Great stuff that's how I plan on doing it. Using the power-lines now and there stunning aren't they.

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:03

shankly1985 said:
Great stuff that's how I plan on doing it. Using the power-lines now and there stunning aren't they.

Yeah, my wifi is too weak downstairs. It's also good that the APU is more than capable of running quite a few games natively at 1080p, and with upcoming driver optimisation and fixes it'll hopefully do a lot better, without having to buy and install Windows.

I might try installing SteamOS too, but at the moment it's running brilliantly with Ubuntu and the Steam client.

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:04

AMDMatt said:
Thanks for the feedback Tepic, i will pass it on.

Do it convincingly

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Mate was using the Steaming fine on his A10-5750M based laptop.

I imagine streaming just needs h.264 decoding? Probably uses very little power.

Mrjobby · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:14

Will try this with a little AM1 APU system

Would be cool if it works well enough for the sort of games that are better played on the couch.

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:26

Mrjobby said:
Will try this with a little AM1 APU system

Would be cool if it works well enough for the sort of games that are better played on the couch.

AM1? How old is that?

I was just playing with a mouse and keyboard, I've got an XBox controller but I'm useless with it.

Martini1991 · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:34

teppic said:
AM1? How old is that?

I was just playing with a mouse and keyboard, I've got an XBox controller but I'm useless with it.

AM1's AMD's newest platform

I use a wireless controller for my Steam Streaming, although I only use it to get around games not having 21:9 support.

mortals · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:37

teppic said:
I'm not sure where to put this, graphics is probably best.

I was just playing around with a simple APU system (6800K) in a cheap HTPC case, I'd installed Ubuntu Linux on it in order to use Netflix and XBMC.

AMD's Linux graphics drivers have never had a good reputation

AMD catalyst performance seems pretty bad in linux atm

mortals said:

teppic said:
Speaking of which, Matt, tell your AMD friends to get an Ubuntu repository for the proprietary drivers

The proprietary drivers unpack from a binary and then build kernel modules for the linux kernel(s) you are using which is probably why they don't have a repository. (also why kernel headers + build-essential are dependencies)

shankly1985 · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:43

mortals said:
AMD catalyst performance seems pretty bad in linux atm

The proprietary drivers unpack from a binary and then build kernel modules for the linux kernel(s) you are using which is probably why they don't have a repository. (also why kernel headers + build-essential are dependencies)

This doesn't matter, the APU system isn't the one running the game. Its just playing it back from his main system.

Martini1991 · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:45

shankly1985 said:
This doesn't matter, the APU system isn't the one running the game. Its just playing it back from his main system.

But you've still got the IGP decoding.

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:46

mortals said:
AMD catalyst performance seems pretty bad in linux atm

The proprietary drivers unpack from a binary and then build kernel modules for the linux kernel(s) you are using which is probably why they don't have a repository. (also why kernel headers + build-essential are dependencies)

You can obviously find ok benchmarks, but typically there are many known problems. Valve even has a site specifically for AMD driver issues on Linux. It's getting better thankfully.

As for the drivers, I know they do that, but you have to install several development packages, not just those, and there's absolutely no reason to when a repository would automate it and keep things up to date.

teppic · 13 Oct 2014 at 14:48

shankly1985 said:
This doesn't matter, the APU system isn't the one running the game. Its just playing it back from his main system.

For streaming yes, but my original comment was about running the games natively.