struggling to stream and record - any upgrades to easy solve?

unwashed potato!

unwashed potato!

unwashed potato!

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currently i play from my xbox one, which plugs straight into my integrated elgato 4k capture card, then that goes on to a monitor.

i then have my pc with the following:
  • USB mic
  • cam
  • obs
  • discord
  • various usb devices, such as a stream deck, bluetooth mouse, keyboard etc.
on obs, i stream to twitch, and then record the footage so i can edit it and upload to youtube.

the quality to twitch is fine, however the videos i upload to youtube aren't as good quality as i'd like. i believe it to be the bitrate is too low, but when i change any settings, i get CPU overload warning and now my stream is no good and jerky, and the pc starts to slow down.

the trouble then gets worse if i even consider to play a game from this pc rather than from my xbox, and then stream/record that. for instance, age of empires 4 is coming out in october and i'd like to play and stream and record that. i don't think my pc could do this.

so I'm looking to either get some upgrades for this pc, or purchase a pc that's designed to do nothing but stream.

These are the specs I have on this pc. Is there anything that you'd see as an instant upgrade that would help solve the problem?


CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core 3.20 Ghz
RAM: 16GB
GPU: Radeon RX 580
SSD: 2 x Samsung 860 EVO 500GB

Thanks
 
Apex said:
i get CPU overload warning and now my stream is no good and jerky, and the pc starts to slow down.
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This is your issue :-)


Which motherboard do you have?

I’d also be inclined to write to the drive which isn’t being used for Windows/the game you’re playing.

An SSD should cope fine, but we’re trying to mitigate any potential bottlenecks.



The first upgrade for me would be a new CPU. Since you’re on a first gen Ryzen, you’ll probably need a new motherboard too.


What’s your budget?
 
Apex said:
Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3-CF
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So you could update the bios on the motherboard and drop in a 3700x 8 core cpu or go crazy with a 12 core 3900x but i dont see the need. New b550 motherboard and cpu 5600x or 5800x if you prefer that option.

Stuttering can be many reasons gaming on the pc while streaming you may be out of memory another 16gb should help. Check usage msi afterburner us a good monitoring tool.

The rx580 is not a bad gaming gpu for 1080p and some 1440p but would be the next logical upgrade.
 
thanks.

if you're suggesting a new MB and CPU, i have an older pc that could potentially be upgraded instead to allow me one for gaming, and one for streaming totally separate. i'm going to go get that pc and post what the specs are later.

can my current MB not take a 5600x? How do i know the type/slot/max a MB can take?
 
Apex said:
thanks.

if you're suggesting a new MB and CPU, i have an older pc that could potentially be upgraded instead to allow me one for gaming, and one for streaming totally separate. i'm going to go get that pc and post what the specs are later.

can my current MB not take a 5600x? How do i know the type/slot/max a MB can take?
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If you want to have a seperate streaming pc that fine but check you would need to check the specs required.

Your motherboard doesnt support the new 5600x (due to bios limitations) hence the 3700x recommendation you can find out cpu compatabilty on the motherboard manufacturers website. I believe the 3700x would handle your needs gaming and streaming at the same time.

There is a b grade 3700x on overclockers i reckon you could get for £160 make them an offer if intrested. It probablly wont come with a cooler so you may have to get one or check put the members.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/b-gr....4ghz-socket-am4-processor-mpk-bg-12q-am.html
 
i've plugged in my older pc. these specs will be old, but i do wonder if it makes more sense to just upgrade this old one for streaming/capturing, and then keep my current pc fine for pc gaming.

specs are:

CPU: i5 3570k
MB: Gigabyte Z77-D3H
RAM: DDR3 8GB
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900

I assume graphics cards don't make a difference for capturing/streaming, it's primarily cpu and ram?

interested to know your thoughts.
 
Easiest thing would be to upgrade CPU. I would get a second hand 3900X or a 3700X, that would be a big upgrade. Think the 3900X's go for ~£275 and 3700X ~£165.
 
ok i've upgrade to a 3900x cpu and still struggling. just today i wasn't even doing anything on my pc other than streaming and recording the same content and the cpu was overloaded with enccoding. completely 100% maxed out the entire time and the stream was not watchable as a result.

i dont get why it's struggling so much still, especially given the gameplay is being done by the xbox.

checking task manager and it shows almost everything at 0%, but video encode 87% right now.
 
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Can't really add much to this and I only stream/record at 1080p though the input can be 4K but I'm using the laptop in my sig w/ OBS - Intel 3610QM with a couple of USB HDMI capture cards and a custom audio capture setup and it never misses a beat. I'd imagine it might struggle at 4K though - but I've had it compositing 3x 1080p sources without an issue into higher resolution streams.

Might be worth using a DPC latency tool to see if any driver is massively flaking out under the load - some USB drivers are a bit meh for high performance use.
 
If you’re using cpu encoding it will be hard on your pc & your AMD RX 580 has a built-in encoder AMF you can use to take the strain for streaming, but AMD are not really supporting streaming well for their gpu's.

So, I would get an Nvidia card for the nvenc encoder, so a RTX 30 or 20 series, or even the GTX 10 series, but the newer ones offer better visual quality & could be a nice upgrade.

RTX gpu's can stream with superior image quality compared to x264 Fast, and on par with x264 Medium cpu encoding.

If you go this route, you can then use the nvenc encoder to record and stream on a one pc setup using OBS for a very minimal performance hit & free up the cpu & gpu to run those games you want to stream/record.
 
Apex said:
do you play and record on the laptop?

the videos you record, assume it's obs or streamlabs obs? do you mind letting me know your settings for video?
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I play on other devices, PC, tablet, console or whatever and either clone the display to a second HDMI output the capture device is plugged into or use the capture device as a HDMI pass-through.

I use OBS and XSplit and just used the settings off one of the guides to "best" settings.

EDIT: Not using nvenc on that laptop.
 
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Fl_ux said:
If you’re using cpu encoding it will be hard on your pc & your AMD RX 580 has a built-in encoder AMF you can use to take the strain for streaming, but AMD are not really supporting streaming well for their gpu's.

So, I would get an Nvidia card for the nvenc encoder, so a RTX 30 or 20 series, or even the GTX 10 series, but the newer ones offer better visual quality & could be a nice upgrade.

RTX gpu's can stream with superior image quality compared to x264 Fast, and on par with x264 Medium cpu encoding.

If you go this route, you can then use the nvenc encoder to record and stream on a one pc setup using OBS for a very minimal performance hit & free up the cpu & gpu to run those games you want to stream/record.
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thanks for this. checking out the prices, some of these cards are crazy money. given under the advice of this forum i've just upgraded to a 3900x cpu and see no difference in performance, i'm a bit bummed to now need to purchase another item at £600+.

what would be the cheapest card you'd suggest that would hopefully solve the problem?
 
Yeah, the GPU prices are crazy right now, you could just stick with the RX 580 and download the Advanced Media Framework SDK to enable the AMD encoder in OBS. AMD have not made this as easy of an option as Nvidia have, since they worked directly with the OBS project for this. There are guides online on setting and such for going this route.

Or maybe you could try get a RTX 3060ti or above, if you could get one at MSRP, maybe a founder edition using the Telegram app and their channel for notifications or something, a 3060 would be cheaper but with no founder’s edition it could be really hard to get at MSRP.

The second had market prices are just too high, you could try get hold of older GTX 970 /1050ti's but they wouldn’t be able to improve your games performance, only the encoder side of things. If you could sell your current card since you've already spent money on upgrading to the excellent 3900x CPU, you could claw back some money that way, but you'd want to keep hold of your current card till you can get the new one in your system, in this crazy GPU climate.

I used to run a r9 290x and made it work the best I could before moving to the GTX 1070, and a streamer on Twitch I know has your RX 580 and has made it work for him, but Nvidia is just a better option currently for content creators. I heard Intel’s new GPU's will have great performance on the encoder front so that could be an option in the future, I hope so, as I'd really like to see AMD up their game in this.

When I use the GE Force Experience overlay to record some gameplay for a YouTube video, I have set, Quality: High, Resolution: In-game, Frame rate: 60 FPS & Bit rate: 50, and that's been fine for me & you can set the bit rate from 10 all the way up to 150 Mbps in the overlay settings, so you can set it up how you like to get the quality you’re looking for.

I hope this will be helpful for you.
 
thanks for the reply.

how would a GeForce 1080ti FE rate for what i need and an improvement over my current card?

would getting the same card i currently have (if they are still sold) and running in crossfire be an option?
 
Not had much experience of running the AMD cards in crossfire while streaming, but from what I’ve seen its possible and potentially problematic. I had the dual GPU HD 7990 back in the day, and used to stream stuff like COH, was ok but not great and ended up going with the r9 290x next, also had a couple of r9 280x's for the kid’s pc's which are just re branded HD 7970's.

The 1080 ti would be fine, as was my 1070 which worked great, but the newer Ampere and Turning cards encoder's where improved upon over Pascals, and do make my stream / videos look better.
 
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