Streaming from PC.

willhub

willhub

willhub

Caporegime
Joined
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Chadderton, Oldham
Does anyone exclusively use their desktop in this fashion? I can't really decide if it's a large waste of money having a desktop pc with a 5800x3d and a 4080 in it exclusively use via streaming software, mostly it does give a "I forgot I was even streaming" experience but still. Maybe it's the new way, allows desktop to be crammed in a discrete corner somewhere far far away, the RGB definitely is a waste of money in this case.
 
Whether a waste of money I guess depends person to person.

I don't use my desktop for it - but I've a 10870H laptop w/ 3070 which is setup for Steam Remote Play which I occasionally use for playing on lower powered devices - though it isn't how I normally do things.

Generally you lose around 25-60% performance via playing this way though.
 
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Not exclusively but I do find myself streaming games to the TV in the lounge much more often these days. All my work done on my laptop is RDP’d into my desktop pc too
 
Rroff said:
Whether a waste of money I guess depends person to person.

I don't use my desktop for it - but I've a 10870H laptop w/ 3070 which is setup for Steam Remote Play which I occasionally use for playing on lower powered devices - though it isn't how I normally do things.

Generally you lose around 25-60% performance via playing this way though.
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The performance in fps seems a couple of fps if that, I'll have to try test, CB2077 at 1440p
 
khevolution said:
Out of curiosity how are you doing this? I'm assuming a wired connection?
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You don't need a wired connection, maybe best for the desktop but if you have Wifi 6 you can do it wirelessly.

On the host, you have a piece of software called "Sunshine", and on the client you have "Moonlight", it's available on the App stores Android/Apple I believe.
 
willhub said:
The performance in fps seems a couple of fps if that, I'll have to try test, CB2077 at 1440p
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Depends quite a bit on what you are playing, specs, whether using a different GPU and/or software for encoding, etc. etc. some games which hit the memory bandwidth and buses hard like Hogwarts Legacy are worse than others.
 
at the moment i exclusively steam stream my games.
the 1650LP i have is to noisy to have it next to me, so i have it in a seporate room and i use TP-powerlines to connect to a lower powered tablet. ususally over a dedicated network not connected to the main network.
it generally works well for my needs. when i have some spare cash i'll be upgrading the system to a complete new system and look at getting advise here on a quiet performance desktop.
for FPS online i dont recomened, but single play you'll be ok, most of my games are dicated buy my current spec so not the newest or highest.

subnautica 1 & 2 / raft / satisfactory / dyson sphere program / baulders gate 3
are about the games i've been playing remote streaming recently.

edit : Palworld today testing in first instance
there are some games that just dont steam wel or at all. Terra invicta comes to mind (you have to launch it a differant way) & supreme commander forged alliance (you cant use mouse scroll to move around the map)
 
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khevolution said:
Out of curiosity how are you doing this? I'm assuming a wired connection?
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I do it wired most of the time but if you have decent Wi-Fi it's OK too, I've done it over Wi-Fi a few times and didn't notice any significant delay. For games I have on Steam I just use the built in Steam Remote Play, for anything else I use Moonlight.
 
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willhub said:
I'll give Hogwarts benchmark too see what sort of impact it is
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Unless they've changed it the "benchmark" option in game doesn't actually do anything useful benchmarking wise it just runs a test off-screen and then annoyingly adjusts your settings to what it thinks your system can handle.
 
Rroff said:
Unless they've changed it the "benchmark" option in game doesn't actually do anything useful benchmarking wise it just runs a test off-screen and then annoyingly adjusts your settings to what it thinks your system can handle.
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Oh actually ages ago I remember tying to stream Hogwarts at 4k and it was tanking, but it wasn't the frame rate, the frame rate was registering ok, but maybe something to do with VRAM usage. So perhaps with streaming the framerate might not be the big issue but if it's hitting close to VRAM limit then it all just tanks.
 
Not exclusively, but I do frequently stream from my desktop to my Steam Deck or living room PC (Vis Nvidia Shield) for more casual games.

Not sure how doing this makes having the powerful PC a "waste" though - if you want to play a game in 4k ultra then you need the PC capable of running those settings, regardless of whether you're sat at your desk or streaming it to another device
 
Haggisman said:
Not exclusively, but I do frequently stream from my desktop to my Steam Deck or living room PC (Vis Nvidia Shield) for more casual games.

Not sure how doing this makes having the powerful PC a "waste" though - if you want to play a game in 4k ultra then you need the PC capable of running those settings, regardless of whether you're sat at your desk or streaming it to another device
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Is your living room PC connected to a 4k tv? If so does the stream handle it ok?
 
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willhub said:
Is your living room PC connected to a 4k tv? If so does the stream handle it ok?
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Yes, it's only 60hz, but it's absolutely fine, the quality isn't quite as sharp as native due to the compression, but I believe this is due to the limited bitrate on the Steam Link app (it's limited to 100mb), it should be better if you have an Nvidia card and use something like Moonlight. There's no HDR support either which is annoying, but not the end of the world, it's never going to be as good as actually sitting in front of the PC, but stil perfectly playable, and a lot cheaper than buying a 2nd 4k capable PC, and more convenient than lugging your main PC around the house to plug it in directly!

I guess the "perfect" solution would be a long HDMI cable and usb extension for your Bluetooth dongle, but obviously that depends on your house layout/where the PC is in relation to the TV, and running cables through the wall/under the floor etc.

If it's something you're going to do a lot, I'd definitely recommend Nvidia over AMD, although I need to check how AMD link performs these days, haven't tried it for a while and it might have improved.
 
I did a bit of research over the weekend and got the Moonlight app on my LG TV and was amazed at the quality, admitidly i had a few connection drops but nothing major, as mentioned above the quality and framerate will be nothing like what you would get sitting in front of your PC, but for casual games its almost perfect.
 
This thread actually prompted me to see if I could make any improvements. Seems there's now a companion server app for Moonlight called Sunshine, which works with AMD GPUs, so I installed it and finally got a chance to test it tonight.

Wow. It's significantly better quality than the Steam Link app. Not quite as straightforward and idiot proof to set up, took me about an hour of fiddling with settings to get it (mostly) working how I want it, but on a 65" TV @ ~3m away, there is no noticeable compression artifacting at all.

The only thing I did notice was a few FPS drops, but can probably tweak that as well (had it set to max quality).

*Need to check if HDR works properly - have to figure out how to enable it on my fake display first!
 
Haggisman said:
This thread actually prompted me to see if I could make any improvements. Seems there's now a companion server app for Moonlight called Sunshine, which works with AMD GPUs, so I installed it and finally got a chance to test it tonight.

Wow. It's significantly better quality than the Steam Link app. Not quite as straightforward and idiot proof to set up, took me about an hour of fiddling with settings to get it (mostly) working how I want it, but on a 65" TV @ ~3m away, there is no noticeable compression artifacting at all.

The only thing I did notice was a few FPS drops, but can probably tweak that as well (had it set to max quality).

*Need to check if HDR works properly - have to figure out how to enable it on my fake display first!
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I honestly think this is the future. Powerful gaming PC that you can stream across your house and beyond.

I’ve been looking into building a rig and pairing with a steam deck/rog ally.
 
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