Question / Help Dedicated Streaming PC or Upgrade Main PC

T

Tidy

Member
Hi Everybody,

I hope asking this question is ok, but its been on my mind for some time after my 3 year old PC is struggling a little lol

My Current Specs are:

AMD Phenom 1090T 3.2ghz
16gb RAM
GTX 570 1280mb
Windows 7 64-bit

It plays games very well, but when streaming it really starts to get tired (bless her)...

My question is this...

Would it be better to upgrade this old girl to something like a new I7.....and stream directly from it...

OR

Build a simple streaming PC with a capture card - if so what would you suggest the specs for a 720 60fps stream should be?

I suppose the other option would be to turn the existing PC into a streaming PC and purchase a new gaming RIG for myself?

Would love to hear your thoughts :)

For reference, Its generally games like Skyrim, Borderlands, Saints Row, C&C... so it does vary a fair bit
 
A

alpinlol

Active Member
actually you should be fine doing at least 720@48 with your current system...

whatsoever if you think about upgrading an i7 will always be fine and will do its job but an cheap amd system with an amd fx 8350 will also do a great job and is 50% the price
 
T

Tidy

Member
Thanks for the reply :)

My only real issue with the FX range (i've always been a massive AMD fan), is that you don't see many streamers that say they use AMD, its always Intel.

The price difference between the 2 always blows my mind, its around £250 (GBP) difference - so there must be a quality pay off somewhere?

** Price difference inc motherbaord
 
A

alpinlol

Active Member
well following literally every benchmark site or whatsoever intel blows amd away in almost every benchmark BUUUT if you want an cheap intel system with i7 3770k(ivy) or i7 4770k(haswell) power buy an intel xeon e3-1230v3 is the haswell xeon for a cheap money and intel xeon e3-1230v2 is the latest ivy version of the xeons the only difference is the cpu socket and the tdp and probably the know fact that haswell cpu's have some massive temp problems
 
T

Tidy

Member
Although the money sort of comes into it, I do want to find the "clever" way to do things lol....

Do you think a separate streaming PC is worth it... or to upgrade the existing PC?
 
K

Kharay

Member
Well, you know... in raw performance, that PC of yours actually beats mine. Not by a great deal but it does. And, mine has little issue doing even 1080p@30 FPS (there is very little point in doing 1080p@60 FPS, it is too much of a strain on bandwidth and given the fact there is a limit to what bitrate Twitch will accept there is a very hard limit on the quality of a 1080p@60 FPS stream).

Personally, I prefer either 720p@30 FPS or 720@48 FPS, both of which are mostly a joke to even my PC.

All you have to consider is dropping the game's settings down a bit. Fact of the matter is, even with a monster PC and a monster Internet connection (I have the monster Internet connection) there is a very clear limit on the quality you can attain in a stream and consequently, some of a game's effects or visual goodieness simply does not translate well to a stream and can safely be toned down heavily without hurting the overall visual quality of your stream.
 
T

Tidy

Member
Thank you both of you by the way ( i realised i never said thank you to alpinlol - sorry)

I agree with 1080, its not worth it. I would love to stream at 720 48fps, but twitch doesnt seem to like my setup lol

For example, a test stream seems really laggy unless i drop down to 540p... that was with saints row. I did get better performance disabling my 2nd monitor - so thats something to do lol

My internet speed is fine but limit my upload to twitch to 2000kbps as I am not partnered etc. (have 12mb max upload)

So probably the next question would be:

Would it be better to run a game in 1280x720 windowed..... or reduce PC resolution down to 1280x720 and run the game fullscreen?

The end result is that i would like a decent stream for viewers, without maxxing out my CPU?
 
K

Kharay

Member
I would not ever consider changing the base resolution of my Windows configuration down to anything below the native resolution of my monitor, personally. That would look awful to myself and well, you are playing the games you are streaming so you having something that is easy on the eyes, your eyes... does help.

However, running in a window is just fine.

May I offer a suggestion there? How about... a 1600x900 window? Scales down really well to 720p in OBS (1.25, Lanczos), is very close to essentially being fullscreen but still freeing up massive amounts of CPU and GPU time.
 
T

Tidy

Member
Ok,

1600x900 window
720
48 fps

Reduced quality in game to low...

Looks and feels pretty nice :)

Thank you :)
 
T

Tidy

Member
Streamed for 2 hours today, and just played it back... really rather nice. Not the crispest of streams, but seems absolutely fine :)

Thank you all for everyones help :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top