Advice on hardware

[stego]

Gday,

currntly using a Dell laptop i5 with on-board Intel graphics card, running latest Pop!OS OS. (Ubuntu based)

We have 2 PTZoptics over NDI and a birddog hdmi to NDI converger to capture windows laptop PowerPoint output.

cpu wise it doesn’t struggle, but having trouble with dropped frames due to rendering lag. My last livestream with multiview on external monitor with studio mode had lots of choppy video and roughly 15% dropped frames due to rendering lag.

I was running OBS in studio mode so figure the extra video feed is taxing the intel graphics card.

it does stabilize a little if I don’t turn on studio mode and use multi view(windowed) as long as I keep it small enough.

We typically livestream as well as record.

I came across this PC for sale for $100 and wondering if I may have a better system I could donate to our church:

Mini tower desktop PC. Intel i5 2500K, 4-core CPU @ 3.30GHz. 8Gb RAM. DVD CD RW drive. 120Gb hard drive. Gigabit Ethernet port. 6 USB ports. Realtek hi-def audio on board. AMD Radeon HD 5800 graphics

Thoughts or tips?

I would put Pop!OS (Ubuntu based) on there although I expect perhaps issues with Linux and dual GPU computer.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

You didn't mention which generation your current i5 CPU is. But a i5-2500 is 2nd gen i5 (sort of), and current is 10th gen, with 11th gen due in a few months (give or take). Personally, I wouldn't bother with something that old for video encoding. Also, if your current laptop isn't using a SSD, I'd certainly consider upgrading it

 

[stego]

You didn't mention which generation your current i5 CPU is. But a i5-2500 is 2nd gen i5 (sort of), and current is 10th gen, with 11th gen due in a few months (give or take). Personally, I wouldn't bother with something that old for video encoding. Also, if your current laptop isn't using a SSD, I'd certainly consider upgrading it

Thanks. I figured it would be too old.

my Dell is an 8th Gen with 256 GB SSD. Also has 12gb of RAM.

i think the graphics card is where I’m hurting.

Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 with shared graphic memory

but I think I may be able to squeeze by if I keep the video playback in OBS to a minimum if that makes any sense.

I have tweaked my output settings accordingly.

Encoder and stream settings are the same and downscaling from 1080p to 720p.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Personally, as I have GPU power to spare, I have my base canvas & output resolution set to 1080p and downscale for stream at 720p. I do that in part so I can record at 1080p. However, from a GPU perspective, what I've read, is keeping your canvas, output same resolution, then not using rescaled output creates lowest 'load'/resource demand.