Question / Help Dedicated Stream PC

[Rivo Karro]

So i have a gaming PC all set and good to go, but i play exclusively FPS games that i need to have smooth 144Hz 1080p gameplay on (mostly Overwatch). If im streaming and recording i get a bit of a laggy feel when playing. Im not dropping FPS, but it just feels laggy while playing. So my plan is to make a second dedicated streaming PC with a capture card.

my plan is as follows:
Motherboard - have AM4 AB350(Gigabyte)
Ryzen 1400 @ 3.2GHz (quad core - turbos to 3.4GHz)
8GB RAM @ 2133Mhz
Elgato HD60 Pro PCI-E capture card
and of course a computer case
750W EVGA PSU - i have
GTX 760 1.5GB GDDR5 (from an old Asus pre-built via Best Buy that a friend donated - so i have a GPU)
HDD - i have a whopping 1TB one that just isnt going to fit as an extra in my gaming PC case - plus right now i have a 3TB editing HDD that i can swap to the stream PC - so totaling 4TB if need be

ill be around $400 into it, but am looking to get 1080p 60FPS recording and streaming by rescaling to 720p 30FPS and am wondering if its going to be enough. I would assume so since most of the workload is going to be on the Ryzen 1400, but want to make sure before i pull the trigger.

 

[b1n4ry]

IMO save up a bit and get a 1600x a quad core will hold you back in the long run and with the latest ones there's a chance you'll get a 1800x in the box

 

[Rivo Karro]

not sure what you mean by this and anyone is welcome to hop in to correct me if i'm wrong, but encoding is one task that wont change for a while - especially if its using the standard 1080p format. Sure 1440p and 4k exist, but they are far from becoming the default standard for something such as streaming. encoding video/audio is something that can only be improved upon with better and more efficient algorithms tbh so i don't see where the "hold you back in the long run" comes in because if were talking hypothetical, lets say the 1400 is capable of doing 1080p60 recording and 720p30 streaming with no stutter lag or issues at all. What would the big difference in price/performance really be if i got the 1600 then? because if its cheaper but does the exact same thing - i'm actually saving myself in the long run because i would have saved $80 now and would be able to re-invest that into something in the future. Plus we are talking video encoding on it - not gaming. Encoding is the same task no matter the game.

 

[b1n4ry]

if you will be happy with 720p forever than go for it i'm one of those who plan ahead and see getting affiliate or partner and can do 1080 or improve my stream quality so its more appealing to sponsors. but that's just me.

 

[Rivo Karro]

yeah in that sense i can see where your coming from, but its rare to sprout in popularity overnight - so the time you spend streaming to build a viewer base naturally (sometimes years) gives you enough time to gather money for the RoI to get a better CPU - plus if its on the AM4 chipset i can get the 1400 now - wait until there's a RoI and then upgrade to the 1700X once affiliated/partner.

 

[Boildown]

Not many capture cards can receive its input at 144Hz. Have you considered this? That Elgato can't do it, for example.

 

[sam686]

The easiest: plug both monitor and capture card to gaming computer and clone them in windows settings, no pass-through needed. Use advanced settings for 144Hz. This might allow 144Hz on monitor and 60Hz on capture card.

Possible alternative: using CRU 1.3 (custom resolution utility) to force a higher refresh rate or custom timing, but a limitation of capture card may show up.

I am not sure if Elgato 4k60 or other 4k 60hz (60 fps) capture cards would support 1080p at up to 240 Hz (240 fps), it has enough bandwidth to do so.

With my AverMedia C027 that only support 720p and 1080i, I was able to capture at 720x576 100Hz and 720x480 120Hz by adding more TV resolutions in CRU. Every frame can be captured. Also was able to capture at 1280x720 75Hz with detailed resolution:
Active: 1280, 720
Front Porch: 110, 5
Sync Width: 40, 5
Back Porch: 220, 20
Refresh Rate: 75 ... anything higher then 720p75 with AverMedia C027 and it starts to horribly flicker my captures.

 

[Boildown]

In my experience, when you clone screens at different framerates, both screens "feel" like they're using the lower framerate even though they report otherwise. This was a few years ago, maybe drivers have improved since then, but I wouldn't count on it.

 

[Rivo Karro]

in theory though.... shouldn't i be able to have OBS capture what the capture card is mirroring in whatever resolution/scale/refresh rate and have OBS encode that portion of the rescaling? so most of the burden of encoding the audio/video is on the encoder that gets resized through OBS? cause i know in OBS you can select the capture card as a source and well....my monitors use DP... so i just run the HDMI to GPU and then to my DP monitors and have the elgato basically capture the main monitor and use OBS to stream/record? or is that just useless overall. My main gaming rig has the Ryzen 1700X in it OC @ 3.8GHz (8 cores 16 threads)

 

[Rivo Karro]

i actually might have figured out whats causing my stuttering issue...i use a 144Hz main monitor while using OBS on my secondary 60Hz and found that there is a weird vsync built into windows desktop manager that could be causing the issue im having - meaning i wont need a secondary streaming PC.

 

[alpinlol]

The RAM you chose is way too slow for Ryzen. Ryzen scales really good with faster RAM and nowadays most Boards, after BIOS Update, are capable of running 2800MHz CL15 RAM which would be a significant boost in performance.

Besides that I highly recommend giving it a little overclock since 3,7GHz is possible on all Ryzen CPUs without much effort and the new boxed cooler is also capable of at least 3,6GHz allcore OC. You will find a How To in seconds on Google.